__ 

OlP  OUl 


THE  JAMES  K.   MOFFITT  FUND. 

LIBRARY  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


GIFT  OF 

JAMES  KENNEDY  MOFFITT 

OF  THE  CLASS  OF  '86. 


Deceived  ,  i8g     . 

Accession  No.  «. 


SOME 

STRKNGE 

CORNERS 

OF 

OUR 

COUNTRY 


LU/AMIS 


THE 

CENTURY 
rr» 


SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS 
OF  OUR  COUNTRY 


r^X- 


NAVAJO  BLANKET. 


SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS 
OF  OUR  COUNTRY 

THE  WONDERLAND  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 


BY 


CHARLES  F.  LUMMIS 

AUTHOR  OF  ••  TEE-WAHN  FOLK-LORE,"  -  A  NEW  MEXICO 
,"    "A    TRAMP  ACROSS    THE    CONTINENT,"    ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 
1900 


Copyright,  1891, 1892,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


THE  DE  VINNE  PRES8. 


To  MY  WIFE  :  WHO  HAS 
SHARED  THE  HARDSHIPS  AND 
THE  PLEASURES  OF  EXPLORING 
THE  STRANGE  CORNERS. 


82844 • 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I  THE  GRANDEST  GORGE  IN  THE  WORLD  1 

II  A  FOREST  OF  AGATE  20 

III  THE  AMERICAN  SAHARA  28 

IV  THE  RATTLESNAKE  DANCE  43 

V  WHERE  THEY  BEG  THE  BEAR'S  PARDON  58 

VI  THE  WITCHES'  CORNER  66 

VII  THE  MAGICIANS  75 

VIII  THE  SELF-CRUCIFIERS  90 

IX  HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS  94 

X  MONTEZUMA'S  WELL  122 

XI  MONTEZUMA'S  CASTLE  134 

XII  THE  GREATEST  NATURAL  BRIDGE  ON  EARTH  142 

XIII  THE  STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM  163 

XIV  THE  RIVERS  OF  STONE  183 

XV  THE  NAVAJO  BLANKET  198 

XVI  THE  BLIND  HUNTERS  208 

XVII  FINISHING  AN  INDIAN  BOY  219 

XVIII  THE  PRAYING  SMOKE  228 

XIX  THE  DANCE  OF  THE  SACRED  BARK  235 

XX  DOCTORING  THE  YEAR  243 

XXI  AN  ODD  PEOPLE  AT  HOME  255 

XXII  A  SAINT  IN  COURT  262 

vii 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

NAVAJO  BLANKET  FRONTISPIECE 

Drawn  by  F.  E.  LUMMIS 

INITIAL  W  1 

Drawn  by  C.  T.  HILL 

THE  GRAND  CANON  OF  THE  COLORADO.    GENERAL  VIEW       3 

Drawn  by  T.  MORAN.    Engraved  by  "W.  J.  LINTON 

ANOTHER  VIEW  OF  THE  GRAND  CANON  6 

Drawn  by  WILLIAM  H.  HOLMES.  Reduced  from  the  large 
plate  in  the  Second  Annual  Report  of  the  U.  S.  Geologi- 
cal Survey 

WITHIN  THE  GRAND  CANON  9 

Drawn  by  T.  MORAN.    Engraved  by  W.  J.  LINTON 

HEAD  OF  THE  GRAND  CANON  OF  THE  COLORADO       12 

Drawn  by  T.  MORAN.    Engraved  by  J.  A.  BOGERT 

CLIMBING  IN  THE  GRAND  CANON  13 

Drawn  by  T.  MORAN.    Engraved  by  P.  ANNIN 

ANOTHER  VIEW  OF  THE  GRAND  CANON  15 

Drawn  by  T.  MORAN.    Engraved  by  E.  BOOKHOUT 

TREE-TRUNK  PETRIFIED  INTO  AN  AGATE  BRIDGE  23 

Drawn  by  T.  MORAN.    Engraved  by  T.  SCHUSSLER 

THE  GREAT  AMERICAN  DESERT  .29 

Drawn  by  W.  C.  FITLER.    Engraved  by  E.  HEINEMANN 

VIEW  AMONG  THE  CACTI  34 

Drawn  by  W.  C.  FITLER 

REV.  J.  W.  BRIER  39 

Drawn  by  MALCOLM  FRASER 

END-PIECE  42 

Drawn  by  W.  TABER 

HUALPJ— A  MOQUI  VILLAGE  44 

Drawn  by  W.-  TABER 

THE  DANCE-COURT  AND  THE  DANCE-ROCK  47 

Drawn  by  W.  TABER 

ix 


. 


THE  MOQUI  INDIAN  SNAKE-DANCE 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

PUEBLO  PRAYER-STICKS  62 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

PUEBLO  HUNTING  FETICHES  65 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

INITIAL  75 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

"SUDDENLY  A  BLINDING  FLASH  OF  FORKED  LIGHTNING 
SHOOTS  ACROSS  THE  ROOM"  81 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

"THE  GROWING  OF  THE  SACRED  CORN"  87 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

PUEBLO  OF  TAOS  96 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

AN  ANCIENT  CLIFF-DWELLING  99 

Drawn  by  T.  MOBAN.    Engraved  by  E.  BOOKHOUT 

PART  OF  CANON  DE  TSAY-EE  101 

Drawn  by  J.  A.  FBASEB.    Engraved  by  PETEB  AITKEN 

CLIFF-VILLAGE  ON  THE  MANGOS  105 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

A  NIGHT  ATTACK  OF  APACHES  UPON  THE  CLIFF-FORTRESS    106 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

RUINED  CAVE-VILLAGE,  CANON  DE  TSAY-EE  109 

Drawn  by  V.  PEBABD.    Engraved  by  H.  E.  SYLVESTEB 
THE   CUEVA  PlNTADA,  OR   "  PAINTED   CAVE  "  112 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

MUMMY  CAVE  AND  VILLAGE,  CANON  DEL  MUERTO,  ARIZONA    115 

Drawn  by  J.  A.  FBASEB.     Engraved  by  H.  E.  SYLVESTEB 

THE  WHITE  HOUSE,  CANON  DE  TSAY-EE  119 

Drawn  by  J.  A.  FBASEE.   Engraved  by  C.  SCHWABZBUBGEB 

INITIAL  122 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 

MONTEZUMA'S  WELL  126 

Drawn  by  W.  TABEB 


"MONTEZUMA'S   CASTLE,"   SEEN  FROM   BEAVER   CREEK  135 

Drawn  by  W.  TABER 

"MONTEZUMA'S   CASTLE,"   FROM   THE   FOOT   OF   THE   CLIFF          139 
Drawn  by  W.  TABER 

LOOKING  THROUGH  THE  SOUTH  ARCH  OF  THE  GREATEST 
NATURAL  BRIDGE  145 

Drawn  by  W.  TABER 

ROUGH  GROUND-PLAN  OF  GOWAN'S  VALLEY  149 

Drawn  by  F.  E.  SITTS 

ANOTHER  VIEW  OF  THE  GREAT  BRIDGE  151 

Drawn  by  W.  TABER 

NATURAL  BRIDGE  NEAR  FORT  DEFIANCE,  NEW  MEXICO      157 

Drawn  by  W.  TABER 

THE  EAGLE  FETICH,  ACTUAL  SIZE  160 

Drawn  by  F.  E.  SITTS 

SOME  LEAVES  FROM  THE  STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM  162 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  1.    JUAN  DE  ONATE  170 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  2.    DIEGO  MARTIN  BARBA  AND  ALFERES  AGOSTYN      172 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  3.    DIEGO  LUCERO  DE  GODOY  174 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  4.    JUAN  GONZALES  175 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  5.    RAMON  PAEZ  HURTADO  175 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  6.    JUAN  PAEZ  HURTADO  176 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  7.    DON  FRANCISCO  MANUEL  DE  SILVA  NIETO  177 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  8.    NIETO  178 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 

FIG.  9.    LUJAN  180 

Drawn  by  J.  M.  NUGENT 
xi 


SOME    STEAWGE    COENEES    OF 
OUE    COUNTET. 


I. 


THE   GRANDEST   GORGE   IN  THE  WORLD. 


live  in  the  most  wonderful  of 
lands;  and  one  of  the  most  won- 
derful things  in  it  is  that  we  as 
Americans  find  so  little  to  won- 
der at.  Other  civilized  nations  take 
pride  in  knowing  their  points  of 
natural  and  historic  interest $  but 
when  we  have  pointed  to  our  mar- 
velous growth  in  population  and 
wealth,  we  are  very  largely  done, 
and  hasten  abroad  in  quest  of 
sights  not  a  tenth  part  so  wonderful  as  a  thousand  won- 
ders we  have  at  home  and  never  dream  of.  It  is  true  that 
other  nations  are  older,  and  have  grown  up  to  think  of 
something  besides  material  matters ;  but  our  youth  and  our 
achievements  are  poor  excuse  for  this  unpatriotic  slighting 


2     SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

of  our  own  country.  There  is  a  part  of  America, — a  part 
even  of  the  United  States — of  which  Americans  know  as 
little  as  they  do  of  inner  Africa,  and  of  which  too  many  of 
them  are  much  less  interested  to  learn.  With  them  "to 
travel"  means  only  to  go  abroad j  and  they  call  a  man  a 
traveler  who  has  run  his  superficial  girdle  around  the  world 
and  is  as  ignorant  of  his  own  country  (except  its  cities)  as  if 
he  had  never  been  in  it.  I  hope  to  live  to  see  Americans 
proud  of  "knowing  America,  and  ashamed  not  to  know  it ;  and 
it  is  to  my  young  countrymen  that  I  look  for  the  patriotism 
to  effect  so  needed  a  change. 

If  we  would  cease  to  depend  so  much  upon  other  countries 
for  our  models  of  life  and  thought,  we  would  have  taken  the 
first  step  toward^fche  Americanism  which  should  be,  but  is 
not,  ours.  We  rea&|  vast  amount  of  the  wonders  of  foreign 
lands  j  but  very  fewljriters — and  still  fewer  reliable  ones — 
tell  us  of  the  marvelous^crets  of  our  own.  Every  intelligent 
youth  knows  that  there  are  boomerang-throwers  in  Australia ; 
but  how  many  are  aware  that  there  are  thousands  of  aborigi- 
nes in  the  United  States  just  as  expert  with  the  magic  club 
as  are  the  Bushmen  ?*  All  have  read  of  the  astounding  feats 
of  the  jugglers  of  India ;  but  how  many  know  that  there  are 
as  good  Indian  jugglers  within  our  own  boundaries?  The 
curious  "Passion  Play"  at  Oberammergau  is  in  the  know- 
ledge of  most  young  Americans ;  but  very  few  of  them  have 
learned  the  startling  fact  that  every  year  sees  in  the  United 

*  The  Pueblo  Indians,  who  annually  kill  countless  thousands  of  rab- 
bits with  these  weapons. 


THE  GRANDEST   GORGE  IN  THE  WORLD.  5 

States  an  infinitely  more  dramatic  Passion  Reality, — a  flesh 
and  blood  crucifixion, — wherein  an  ignorant  fanatic  repre- 
sents in  fact  the  death  of  the  Savior.  How  many  young 
Americans  could  say,  when  some  traveler  recounted  the  ex- 
ploits of  the  world-famous  snake-charmers  of  the  Orient, 
"  Why,  yes,  we  have  tribes  of  Indians  in  this  country  whose 
trained  charmers  handle  the  deadliest  snakes  with  impunity," 
and  go  on  to  tell  the  astonishing  facts  in  the  case!  How 
many  know  that  there  are  Indians  here  who  dwell  in  huge 
six-story  tenements  of  their  own  building  ?  How  many  know 
that  the  last  witch  in  the  United  States  did  not  go  up  in  the 
cruel  smoke  of  old  Salem,  but  that  there  is  still  within  our 
borders  a  vast  domain  wherein  witchcraft  is  as  fully  believed 
in  as  yesterday  is,  and  where  somebody  is  executed  every 
year  for  the  strange  crime  of  "being  .a  witch "? 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  strange  things  at  home  of 
which  we  know  not.  There  are  thousands  of  others ;  and  if 
it  shall  ever  become  as  fashionable  to  write  about  America 
as  it  is  about  Africa,  we  shall  have  chance  to  learn  that  in 
the  heart  of  the  most  civilized  nation  on  earth  are  still  sav- 
age peoples,  whose  customs  are  stranger  and  more  interest- 
ing than  those  of  the  Congo. 

As  to  our  scenery,  we  are  rather  better  informed  j  and 
yet  eveiy  year  thousands  of  un-American  Americans  go  to 
Europe  to  see  scenery  infinitely  inferior  to  our  own,  upon 
which  they  have  never  looked.  We  say  there  are  no  ruins  in 
this  country,  and  cross  the  ocean  to  admire  crumbling  piles 
less  majestic  and  less  interesting  than  are  in  America.  We 


THE  GRANDEST  GORGE  IN  THE  WORLD.  7 

read  of  famous  gorges  and  denies  abroad,  and  are  eager  to 
see  them,  unknowing  that  in  a  desolate  corner  of  the  United 
States  is  the  greatest  natural  wonder  of  the  world — a  canon 
in  which  all  the  world's  famous  gorges  could  be  lost  forever. 
And  not  one  American  in  ten  thousand  has  ever  looked  upon 
its  awful  grandeur. 

Of  course,  we  know  the  Sahara,  for  that  is  not  American  j 
but  you  will  seek  far  to  find  any  one  who  is  familiar  with  an 
American  desert  as  absolute  and  as  fearful.  We  are  aware 
of  our  giant  redwoods  in  California, — the  hugest  trees  in 
the  world, — but  did  you  ever  hear  of  a  petrified  forest  cov- 
ering thousands  of  acres  ?  There  is  one  such  in  the  United 
States,  and  many  smaller  ones.  Do  you  know  that  in  one 
territory  alone  we  have  the  ruins  of  over  fifteen  hundred 
stone  cities  as  old  as  Columbus,  and  many  of  them  far  older  ? 
Have  you  ever  heard  of  towns  here  whose  houses  are  three- 
story  caves,  hewn  from  the  solid  rock  ? 

It  seems  to  me  that  when  these  and  so  many  other  won- 
ders are  a  part  of  America,  we,  who  are  Americans,  should 
be  ashamed  to  know  absolutely  nothing  of  them.  If  such 
things  existed  in  England  or  Germany  or  France,  there 
would  be  countless  books  and  guides  overflowing  with  infor- 
mation about  them,  and  we  would  hasten  on  excursions  to 
them,  or  learn  all  that  reading  would  tell  us. 

There  is  no  untruer  proverb  than  the  one  which  says,  "  It 
is  never  too  late  to  learn."  As  we  grow  old  we  learn  many 
things,  indeed,  and  fancy  ourselves  enormously  wise;  but 
that  wisdom  is  only  the  skin  of  life,  so  to  say,  and  what  we 


8     SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

learn  in  youth  is  the  real  bone  and  blood.  I  would  rather 
interest  one  of  my  young  countrymen  than  a  thousand  of 
the  unconvertible  older  ones  ;  and  if  I  could  induce  him  to 
resolve  that,  whatever  else  he  learned,  he  would  learn  all  he 
could  of  his  own  country,  I  should  be  very  happy  indeed. 
Let  me  tell  you  briefly,  then,  of  a  few  of  the  strange  corners 
of  our  country  which  I  have  found — something  of  the  won- 
derland of  the  southwest — which  I  hope  you  will  some  day 
be  interested  to  see  for  yourselves. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado  as  a 
gorge  in  which  all  the  famous  gorges  could  be  lost.  Some  of 
you  have  ridden  through  the  "  Grand  Canon  of  the  Arkan- 
saw,"  on  the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande  Railway  in  Colorado,  and 
still  more  through  the  White  Mountain  Notch  and  the  Fran- 
conia  Notch  in  New  Hampshire.  All  three  are  very  beauti- 
ful and  noble  j  but  if  any  one  of  them  were  duplicated  in 
the  wall  of  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado,  and  you  were 
looking  from  the  opposite  brink  of  that  stupendous  chasm, 
you  would  have  to  have  your  attention  called  to  those 
scratches  on  the  other  side  before  you  would  notice  them  at 
all !  If  you  were  to  take  the  tallest  mountain  east  of  the 
Rockies,  dig  down  around  its  base  a  couple  of  thousand  feet 
so  as  to  get  to  the  sea-level  (from  which  its  height  is  mea- 
sured), uproot  the  whole  giant  mass,  and  pitch  it  into  the 
deepest  of  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado,  its  granite  top 
would  not  reach  up  to  the  dizzy  crests  of  the  cliffs  which  wall 
the  awful  bed  of  that  muddy  river.  If  you  were  on  the 
stream,  and  New  York's  noble  statue  of  Liberty  Enlighten- 


WITHIN  THE  GRAND  CANON. 


THE  GRANDEST  GORGE  IN  THE  WORLD.  11 

ing  the  World  were  upon  the  cliff,  it  would  look  to  you  like 
the  tiniest  of  dolls;  and  if  it  were  across  the  canon  from 
you,  you  would  need  a  strong  glass  to  see  it  at  all ! 

The  Grand  Canon  lies  mostly  in  Arizona,  though  it  touches 
also  Utah,  Nevada,  and  California.  With  its  windings  and 
side-canons  of  the  first  magnitude  it  is  nearly  seven  hundred 
miles  long  j  and  in  many  places  it  is  over  a  mile  and  a  quar- 
ter deep  !  The  width  of  this  unparalleled  chasm  at  the  top 
is  from  eight  to  twenty  miles }  and  looked  down  upon  from 
above,  a  larger  river  than  the  Hudson  (and  more  than  three 
times  as  long)  looks  like  a  silver  thread.  The  Yosemite  and 
the  Yellowstone,  wonderful  as  they  are  in  their  precipices, — 
and  the  world  outside  of  America  cannot  match  those  won- 
drous valleys, — are  babies  beside  this  peerless  gorge. 

The  walls  of  the  Grand  Canon  are  in  most  places  not  per- 
pendicular; but  seen  from  in  front  they  all  appear  to  be. 
They  are  mostly  of  sandstone,  but  in  places  of  marble,  and 
again  of  limestone,  and  yet  again  of  volcanic  rock  j  generally 
"terraced"  in  a  manner  entirely  peculiar  to  the  southwest, 
and  cleft  into  innumerable  buttes,  which  seem  towers  and 
castles,  but  are  infinitely  more  vast  and  more  noble  than  the 
hand  of  man  will  ever  rear.  And  when  the  ineffable  sun- 
shine of  that  arid  but  enchanted  land  falls  upon  their  won- 
drous domes  and  battlements  with  a  glow  which  seems  not 
of  this  world,  the  sight  is  such  a  revelation  that  I  have  seen 
strong  men  sit  down  and  weep  in  speechless  awe. 

There  are  no  great  falls  in  the  Grand  Canon ;  but  many 
beautiful  and  lofty  ones  in  the  unnumbered  hundreds  of  side- 


HEAD   OF   THE   GRAND   CANON   OF   THE   COLORADO. 


THE   GRANDEST    flOTCfJE   TN    THE   W(VRLI). 


13 


canons  which  en- 
ter the  great  one. 
I  had  almost  said 
"little  canons," 
for  so  they  seem 
in  the  pivsciH-r 
of  their  giant 
mother;  but  in 
reality,  almost 
any  one  of  them 
would  shame  any 
canon  elsewhere. 
There  is  no 
such  thing  as 
describing  the 
({rand  Canon, 
and  I  dare  not 
try.  But  I  shall 
borrow  a  few 
Avords  from  the 
man  who  has 
come  nearer  giv- 
ing in  words  a 
hint  of  the  canon 
than  has  any  one 
else  —  Charles 
Dudley  Warner. 
He  has  said : 
2 


CLIMBING    IN    THE    CiKANL)    CA 


14    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

"  This  region  is  probably  the  most  interesting  territory  of 
its  size  on  the  globe.  At  least  it  is  unique.  In  attempting 
to  convey  an  idea  of  it  the  writer  can  be  assisted  by  no 
comparison.  .  .  .  The  Vermilion  Cliffs,  the  Pink  Cliffs,  the 
White  Cliffs  surpass  in  fantastic  form  and  brilliant  color 
anything  that  the  imagination  conceives  possible  in  nature  j 
and  there  are  dreamy  landscapes  quite  beyond  the  most  ex- 
quisite fancies  of  Claude  and  of  Turner.  The  region  is  full 
of  wonders,  of  beauties,  and  sublimities  that  Shelley's  im- 
aginings do  not  match  in  the  l  Prometheus  Unbound/  .  .  . 
Human  experience  has  no  prototype  of  this  region,  and  the 
imagination  has  never  conceived  of  its  forms  and  colors.  It 
is  impossible  to  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  it  by  pen  or 
pencil  or  brush.  .  .  .  The  whole  magnificence  broke  upon  us. 
No  one  could  be  prepared  for  it.  The  scene  is  one  to  strike 
dumb  with  awe,  or  to  unstring  the  nerves.  ...  It  was  a 
shock  so  novel  that  the  mind,  dazed,  quite  failed  to  compre- 
hend it.  All  that  we  could  comprehend  was  a  vast  confusion 
of  amphitheaters  and  strange  architectural  forms  resplendent 
with  color.  The  vastness  of  the  view  amazed  us  quite  as 
much  as  its  transcendent  beauty.  .  .  .  We  had  come  into  a 
new  world.  .  .  .  This  great  space  is  filled  with  gigantic  archi- 
tectural constructions,  with  amphitheaters,  gorges,  precipices, 
walls  of  masonry,  fortresses,  temples  mountain  size,  all  brill- 
iant with  horizontal  lines  of  color — streaks  of  solid  hues  a 
thousand  feet  in  width — yellows,  mingled  white  and  gray, 
orange,  dull  red,  brown,  blue,  carmine,  green,  all  blending  in 
the  sunlight  into  one  transcendent  effusion  of  splendor.  .  .  . 


HE   GRAND    <  ANON. 


THE 

ITT 


THE  GRANDEST  GORGE  IX  THE  WORLD.  17 

The  vast  abyss  has  an  atmosphere  of  its  own  .  .  .  golden, 
^ray,  l;»rilliant  and  somber,  and  playing  a  thousand  fan- 
tastic tricks  to  the  vision.  .  .  .  Some  one  said  that  all  that 
needed  to  perfect  this  scene  was  a  Niagara  Falls.  I 
thought  what  figure  a  fall  150  feet  high  and  3000  long  would 
make  in  this  arena.  It  would  need  a  spy-glass  to  discover  it. 
An  adequate  Niagara  here  should  be  at  least  three  miles  in 
breadth  and  fall  2000  feet  over  one  of  those  walls.  And  the 
:nite — ah!  the  lovely  Yosemite  !  Dumped  down  into 
this  wilderness  of  gorges  and  mountains,  it  would  take  a 
guide  who  knew  of  its  existence  a  long  time  to  find  it.  ... 
Those  who  have  long  and  carefully  studied  the  Grand  Canon 
of  the  Colorado  do  not  hesitate  for  a  moment  to  pronounce 
it  by  far  the  most  sublime  of  all  earthly,  spectacles,"" 

Very  few  Americans  see  the  Grand  Canon — shamefully 
few.  Most  of  it  lies  in  an  absolute  desert,  where  are  neither 
people,  food,  nor  obtainable  water — for  the  river  has  carved 
this  indescribable  abyss  of  a  trough  through  a  vast  flat  up- 
land, from  which  in  many  places  a  descent  to  the  stream 
is  impossible :  and  yet  the  canon  is  easily  reached  at  some 
points.  The  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Railroad  comes  (at  Peach 
Springs,  Arizona")  within  twenty-three  miles  of  it,  and  one 
can  take  a  stage  to  the  canon.  The  stage-road  winds  down 
to  the  bottom  of  the  Grand  Canon  by  way  of  the  Diamond 
Creek  Canon,  which  is  itself  a  wonderful  chasm. 

The  point  whence  Mr.  Warner  saw  the  canon  was  at  the 
head  of  the  Hance  trail,  in  the  Kaibab  plateau :  and  it  is  by 
far  the  sublimest  part  of  the  canon  that  is  accessible.  It  is 


18    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

reached  by  a  sixty-seven-mile  ride  from  Flagstaff  on  the  At- 
lantic and  Pacific  Railroad.  Three  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago  a  poor  Spanish  lieutenant  with  twenty  men  penetrated 
that  fearful  wilderness  and  looked  down  upon  the  world's 
utmost  wonder.  And  only  now,  for  the  first  time  in  its  his- 
tory, is  the  Grand  Canon  easily  accessible  to  the  traveler  at 
its  noblest  point.  A  good  stage-line  has  just  been  started 
from  Flagstaff,  and  I  went  out  on  the  second  trip,  unwilling 
to  advise  travelers  except  from  personal  knowledge.  Mr. 
Clarke,  of  St.  Nicholas,  was  with  me.  The  road  has  been 
much  improved  since  Mr.  Warner's  visit,  and  is  now  the  best 
long  mountain-road  in  the  southwest.  There  are  comfort- 
able hotels  in  Flagstaff,  the  stages  are  comfortable,  the  three 
relays  of  horses  make  the  sixty-seven-mile  journey  easily  in 
eleven  hours,  and  there  is  nothing  in  the  trip  to  deter  ladies 
or  young  people.  The  drive  is  through  the  fine  pine  forests, 
with  frequent  and  changing  views  of  the  noble  San  Fran- 
cisco peaks  and  the  Painted  Desert.  It  brings  one  to  the  veiy 
brink  of  this  terrific  gorge  almost  without  warning ;  and  one 
looks  down  suddenly  upon  all  that  matchless  wonderland. 
The  canon  is  here  6600  feet  deep.  One  can  explore  it  for 
miles  along  the  rim,  finding  new  wonders  at  every  step. 
Even  if  one  sits  in  one  spot,  one  sees  a  new  canon  every  hour 
— the  scene-changers  are  always  shifting  that  divine  stage- 
setting.  One  should  not  fail  to  descend  the  excellent  trail 
to  the  river — seven  miles — built  by  that  interesting  pioneer 
John  Hance.  It  gives  an  altogether  new  idea  of  the  canon 
— and  if  one  stays  a  month  and  travels  every  hour  of  day- 


THE  GRANDEST  GORGE  IN   THE  WORLD.  19 

li«i-ht,  one  does  not  yet  realize  the  canon.     At  the  end  of  a 
lifetime,  it  would  be  more  interesting  than  ever. 

The  stage  journey  takes  a  day  each  way,  and  the  fare  for 
the  round  trip  is  twenty  dollars.  One  should  take  as  much 
time  as  possible  at  the  canon  j  but  three  days  in  all  (includ- 
ing the  stage-ride)  is  better  than  nothing — indeed,  is  better 
than  anything  anywhere  else.  Good  meals  and  beds  are 
there  at  one  dollar  each.  This  line  can  operate  only  from 
May  1st  to  December  1st,  on  account  of  the  winter  snows 
of  that  7000-foot  plateau;  but  from  December  to  May  one 
can  go  in  by  the  Peach  Springs  route,  which  reaches  the 
bottom  of  the  canon,  and  is  more  comfortable  in  winter  than 
in  summer. 


n. 


A   FOREST   OF   AGATE. 

ROM  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Railroad  it  is  still 
easier  to  reach  a  great  natural  curiosity — the 
huge  Petrified  Forest  of  Arizona.  Much  the 
nearest  point  is  the  little  station  of  Billings,  but 
there  are  scant  accommodations  there  for  the 
traveler  —  only  a  railroad  section-house  and  a  ranch-house. 
Only  a  mile  south  of  the  track,  at  that  point,  one  may  see  a  low, 
dark  ridge,  marked  by  a  single  cotton-wood  tree.  Walking 
thither  (over  a  valley  so  alive  with  jack-rabbits  that  there  is 
some  excuse  for  the  cow-boy  declaration  that  "  you  can  walk 
clear  across  on  their  backs !  ")  one  soon  reaches  the  northern 
edge  of  the  forest,  which  covers  hundreds  of  square  miles. 
Unless  you  are  more  hardened  to  wonderful  sights  than  I  am, 
you  will  almost  fancy  yourself  in  some  enchanted  spot.  You 
seem  to  stand  on  the  glass  of  a  gigantic  kaleidoscope,  over 
whose  sparkling  surface  the  sun  breaks  in  infinite  rainbows. 
You  are  ankle-deep  in  such  chips  as  I  '11  warrant  you  never 
saw  from  any  other  woodpile.  What  do  you  think  of  chips 
from  trees  that  are  red  moss-agate,  and  amethyst,  and  smoky 
topaz,  and  agate  of  every  hue  ?  That  is  exactly  the  sort  of 


A  FOREST   OF  AGATE.  21 

splinters  that  cover  the  ground  for  miles  here,  around  the 
huge  prostrate  trunks — some  of  them  five  feet  through — 
from  which  Time's  patient  ax  has  hewn  them.  I  broke  a 
specimen  from  the  heart  of  a  tree  there,  years  ago,  which  had, 
around  the  stone  pith,  a  remarkable  array  of  large  and  ex- 
quisite crystals;  for  on  one  side  of  the  specimen — which  is 
not  so  large  as  my  hand — is  a  beautiful  mass  of  crystals  of 
royal  purple  amethyst,  and  on  the  other  an  equally  beautiful 
array  of  smoky  topaz  crystals.  One  can  also  get  magnificent 
cross-sections  of  a  whole  trunk,  so  thin  as  to  be  portable,  and 
showing  every  vein  and  even  the  bark.  There  is  not  a  chip 
in  all  those  miles  which  is  not  worthy  a  place,  just  as  it  is, 
in  the  proudest  cabinet,  and  when  polished  I  know  no  other 
rock  so  splendid.  It  is  one  of  the  hardest  stones  in  the  world, 
and  takes  and  keeps  an  incomparable  polish. 

In  the  curious  sandstone  hills  a  mile  northeast  of  Billings 
is  an  outlying  part  of  the  forest,  less  beautiful  but  fully  as 
strange.  There  you  will  find  giant  petrified  logs,  three  and 
four  feet  in  diameter,  projecting  yards  from  steep  bluffs  of 
a  peculiar  bluish  clay.  Curiously  enough,  t his  "  wood  n  is  not 
agate,  nor  bright-hued,  but  a  soft  combination  of  browns 
and  grays,  and  absolutely  opaque — whereas  all  the  "wood" 
across  the  valley  is  translucent  and  some  of  it  quite  trans- 
parent. It  also  "  splits  up  "  in  an  entirely  different  fashion. 
But  if  these  half -hidden  logs  in  the  bluffs  are  less  attractive 
to  the  eye,  they  are  quite  as  interesting,  for  they  tell  even 
more  clearly  of  the  far,  forgotten  days  when  all  this  great 
upland  (now  five  thousand  feet  above  the  sea)  sank  with  all 


22    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

its  forests,  and  lay  for  centuries  in  water  strongly  charged 
with  mineral,  which  turned  the  undecaying  trees  to  eternal 
stone.  These  latter  trunks  project  about  a  third  of  the  way 
up  a  bluff  over  one  hundred  feet  high.  They  are  packed  in  a 
twenty-foot  deposit  of  fine  clay;  and  above  them  since  the 
waters  buried  them  there  has  formed  a  stratum  of  solid  sand- 
stone more  than  thirty  feet  thick!  That  shows  what  un- 
counted millenniums  they  have  been  there.  The  erosion 
which  has  carved  the  bluffs  out  of  the  general  table-land, 
and  thus  at  last  exposed  the  ends  of  these  stone  log's,  was  of 
comparatively  recent  date.  There  is  no  knowing  how  much 
more  earth  and  stone  lay  once  above  the  logs,  when  erosion 
first  began  to  change  the  face  of  the  whole  country.  Other 
logs  are  solidly  imbedded  in.  the  rock  cliff  itself. 

The  most  convenient  way  of  reaching  the  Petrified  Forest 
— and  the  most  impressive  part  of  it — is  by  a  fifteen-mile 
drive  from  Holbrook  station.  In  Chalcedony  Park,  as  this 
part  of  the  forest  is  called,  is  the  largest  number  of  huge  pet- 
rified trees  to  be  found  in  any  one  place  in  the  world.  One 
of  them  spans  a  deep  arroyo  forty  feet  wide,  forming  prob- 
ably the  only  bridge  of  solid  agate  on  this  globe.  The  inev- 
itable vandal  has  blown  up  a  few  of  these  superb  stone  logs 
with  giant-powder,  to  get  some  specimens  for  his  contempt- 
ible pocket;  but  there  are  thousands  still  spared,  and  the 
forest  is  now  so  guarded  that  a  repetition  of  these  outrages 
is  not  probable.  In  Tiffany's  jewelry  store,  Xew  York,  yon 
can  see  some  magnificent  specimens  of  polished  cross-sections 
from  these  logs,  which  command  enormous  prices.  The  man 


KIMEU    INTO   AN  AGATE   BRIDGE. 


A  FOREST   OF  AGATE.  25 

in  Sioux  Falls  who  superintended  the  sawing  of  them  told 
me  that  a  steel  saw,  six  inches  wide  and  aided  by  diamond- 
dust,  was  worn  down  to  a  half-inch  ribbon  in  going  through 
thirty-six  inches  of  that  adamantine  "wood" — a  process 
which  lasted  many  days. 

This  petrified  forest  was  a  very  important  thing  in  the 
economy  of  the  brown  first  Americans — long  centuries  before 
Europe  dreamed  of  a  New  World.  Its  beautiful  "woods" 
traveled  all  over  the  great  southwest,  and  sometimes  far  out 
into  the  plains.  Not  that  the  Indians  used  it  for  jewelry 
as  we  are  now  doing  j  but  they  made  of  it  articles  far  more 
valuable  than  the  little  charms  into  which  it  is  nowadays 
polished  by  the  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  annually.  Some 
of  this  agate  was  the  very  best  material  possible  for  their 
arrow-heads,  spear-heads,  knives,  scrapers,  and  other  material ; 
and  they  seem  to  have  preferred  it  to  the  commoner  volcanic 
glass.  Many  hundreds  of  miles  from  the  Petrified  Forest  I 
have  picked  up  these  stone  implements  which  were  unmis- 
takably made  from  its  "wood."  I  have  hundreds  of  beautiful 
arrow-points,  and  many  spear-heads  of  all  sorts  of  agate, 
and  several  scalping-knives  of  lovely  moss  agate,  all  of  which 
came  from  there  originally,  though  all  found  at  long  dis- 
tances away.  The  Indians  used  to  make  excursions  thither 
to  get  these  prized  chips ;  and  evidently  traded  them  to  very 
distant  tribes. 

In  the  extreme  eastern  edge  of  Arizona,  some  forty  miles 
southeast  of  the  Petrified  Forest,  and  about  forty  miles  south- 
west of  the  remote  and  interesting  Indian  pueblo  of  Zuni, 
3 


26    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

N.  M.,  is  a  strange  natural  phenomenon — a  great,  shallow  salt 
lake,  at  the  bottom  of  a  bowl-like  depression  some  hundreds 
of  feet  deep  and  about  three  miles  across.  The  basin  is  daz- 
zling white  with  a  crust  of  salt  crystals.  About  in  the  center 
rises  a  small  black  volcanic  peak :  and  if  you  will  take  the 
trouble  to  ford  the  salt  lake — which  is  disagreeable  but  not 
dangerous  to  do — and  climb  the  peak,  you  will  find  its  crater 
half -filled  with  a  lakelet  of  pure,  fresh  water  !  There  are  very 
many  of  these  salt  lakes  in  the  southwest,  and  from  them  the 
Indians  from  time  immemorial  have  procured  their  salt — and 
so  did  the  Mexican  colonists  until  within  ten  years.  There 
is  also  a  large  river  of  salt  water — the  Salt  River,  in  south- 
western Arizona. 

A  very  curious  and  disagreeable  freak  of  nature  found  in 
some  parts  of  the  southwest  is  that  treacherous  pitfall  known 
as  the  sumidero.  These  ugly  traps  are  quite  numerous  in 
some  valleys — particularly  in  the  vicinity  of  Sail  Mateo, 
N.  M.  There  is  no  danger-signal  to  show  their  whereabouts ; 
and  the  first  warning  one  has  of  a  Mnnidt.ro  is  apt  to  be  too 
late.  These  characteristic  pits  are  a  sort  of  mud  springs 
with  too  much  mud  to  flow,  and  too  much  water  to  dry  up. 
They  are  roundish,  about  the  size  of  a  well-hole,  and  some- 
times as  deep — in  fact,  they  are  what  we  might  call  masked 
wells.  There  are  quicksands  at  various  points  in  nearly  every 
stream  of  the  southwest;  but  even  these,  frequently  fatal  as 
they  are,  are  not  nearly  so  dangerous  as  the  xiittiifleros.  In 
fording  a  southwestern  stream  one  expects,  and  is  prepared 
for,  quicksands.  But  there  is  no  looking  out  for  a  sumidero. 


A  FOREST   OF  AGATE.  27 

These  masked  wells  occur  in  bare,  alkali-covered  flats.  The 
mud  upon  their  surface  is  baked  dry,  and  there  is  absolutely 
nothing  to  distinguish  them  from  the  safe  ground  around. 
But  man  or  horse  or  sheep  or  cow  that  once  steps  upon  that 
tivac'lierous  surface  slumps  from  sight  in  an  instant.  Many 
animals  and  some  people  perish  in  these  sumideros,  and  the 
bodies  are  hardly  ever  recovered.  The  longest  pole  will  not 
find  bottom  to  one  of  these  mud  springs.  A  Mexican  friend 
of  mine  is  one  of  the  few  who  ever  got  into  a  sumidero  and 
got  out  again.  He  was  loping  across  the  dry  plain  when 
suddenly  the  horse  disappeared  in  a  great  splash  of  mud. 
The  rider  was  thrown  from  the  saddle,  and  clutched  the 
edges  of  the  pit  so  that  he  was  able  to  draw  himself  out. 

The  pueblo  of  Zuni  itself  is  well  worthy  of  a  visit.  It  has 
an  important  history,  as  you  will  see  in  the  chapter  on  the 
Stone  Autograph  Album;  and  its  architecture,  its  people, 
and  its  customs  are  full  of  keen  interest  to  every  intelligent 
American.  Among  the  least  of  its  curiosities  are  several 
blonde  Indians  as  genuine  albinos  as  white  rabbits  are.  They 
are  pure-blooded  Indians,  but  their  skins  are  very  light,  their 
hair  almost  tow-color,  and  their  eyes  red.  The  people  of 
Zuni  also  make  the  handsomest  pottery  of  all  the  Pueblos  j 
and  some  of  their  large  old  water-jars,  painted  with  strange 
figures  of  elk  and  other  animals,  are  really  valuable.  The 
best  way  to  get  to  Zuni  is  from  the  station  of  Gallup,  where 
carnages  and  drivers  can  be  procured.  The  road  is  too  easily 
lost  for  the  stranger  to  undertake  it  alone ;  but  the  tireless 
horses  of  the  country  cover  the  lonely  miles  in  a  few  hours. 


m. 


THE  AMERICAN  SAHARA. 

HE  Great  American  Desert  was  almost  better 
known  a  generation  ago  than  it  is  to-day.  Then 
thousands  of  the  hardy  Argonauts  had  tra- 
versed that  fearful  waste  on  foot  with  their 
dawdling  ox-teams,  and  hundreds  of  them  had  left  then* 
bones  to  bleach  in  that  thirsty  land.  The  survivors  of  those 
deadly  journeys  had  a  very  definite  idea  of  what  that  desert 
was  5  but  now  that  we  can  roll  across  it  in  a  day  in  Pull- 
man palace-cars,  its  real — and  still  existing — horrors  are 
largely  forgotten.  I  have  walked  its  hideous  length  alone 
and  wounded,  and  realize  something  more  of  it  from  that 
than  a  great  many  railroad  journeys  across  it  since  have  told 
me.  Now  every  transcontinental  railroad  crosses  the  great 
desert  whose  vast,  arid  waste  stretches  up  and  down  the  con- 
tinent, west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  for  nearly  two  thousand 
miles.  The  northern  routes  cut  its  least  gruesome  parts ; 
but  the  two  which  traverse  its  southern  half — the  Atlantic 
and  Pacific  Railroad  and  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad  — 
pierce  some  of  its  grimmest  recesses. 

The  first  scientific  exploration  of  this  deadly  area  was  Lieu- 
tenant Wheeler's  United  States  survey  in  tlie  early  iii'ties  :  and 


r 


THE  AMERICAN  SAHARA.  31 

he  was  first  to  give  scientific  assurance  that  we  have  here  a 
desert  as  absolute  as  the  Sahara.  If  its  parched  sands  could 
speak  their  record,  what  a  story  they  might  tell  of  unearth- 
ly sufferings  and  raving  death ;  of  slow-plodding  caravans, 
whose  patient  oxen  lifted  their  feet  ceaselessly  from  the  blis- 
tering gravel  and  bawled  with  agony  j  of  drawn  human  faces 
that  peered  hungrily  at  yon  lying  image  of  a  placid  lake,  and 
toiled  frantically  on  to  sink  at  last,  hopeless  and  strengthless, 
in  the  hot  dust  which  the  mirage  had  painted  with  the  hues 
and  the  very  waves  of  water ;  and  whose  were  the  ghastly 
relics  that  whiten  there  to-day,  uncrumbled  after  a  generation 
of  exposure  to  the  dryest  air  on  the  globe ! 

No  one  will  ever  know  how  many  have  laid  their  gaunt 
forms  to  the  long  sleep  in  that  inhospitable  land;  but  the 
number  runs  up  into  the  thousands.  Not  a  year  passes,  even 
now,  without  record  of  many  deaths  upon  that  desert,  and 
of  many  more  who  wander  back,  crazed  with  the  delirium  of 
thirst,  and  are  taken  to  a  kindlier  clime  only  to  die  there. 
Even  people  at  the  railroad  stations  sometimes  rove  off, 
lured  by  the  strange  fascination  of  the  desert,  and  never 
come  back;  and  of  the  adventurous  miners  who  seek  to 
probe  the  golden  secrets  of  those  barren  and  strange-hued 
ranges,  there  are  countless  victims. 

A  desert  is  not  necessarily  an  endless,  level  waste  of  burn- 
ing sand ;  and  the  Great  American  Desert  is  far  from  it.  It 
is  full  of  strange,  burnt,  ragged  mountain  ranges,  with  de- 
ceptive, sloping  broad  valleys  between — though  as  we  near 
its  southern  end  the  mountains  become  somewhat  less  nu- 


32    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

merous,  and  the  sandy  wastes  more  prominent.  There  are 
countless  extinct  volcanoes  upon  it,  and  hundreds  of  square 
miles  of  black,  "bristling  lava-flows.  A  majority  of  it  is 
sparsely  clothed  with  the  hardy  greasewoodj  but  in  places 
not  a  plant  of  any  sort  breaks  the  surface,  far  as  the  eye  can 
reach.  The  summer  heat  is  inconceivable,  often  reaching 
136°  in  the  shade ;  and  a  piece  of  metal  which  has  lain  in 
the  sun  can  no  more  be  handled  than  could  a  red-hot  stove. 
Even  in  winter  the  midday  heat  is  sometimes  insufferable, 
while  at  night  ice  frequently  forms  on  the  water-tanks.  The 
daily  range  of  temperature  there  is  said  to  be  the  greatest 
ever  recorded  anywhere ;  and  a  change  of  80°  in  a  few  hours 
is  not  rare.  Such  violent  variations  are  extremely  trying  to 
the  human  system;  and  among  the  few  people  who  live  on 
the  edges  of  the  hottest  of  lands,  pneumonia  is  the  commonest 
of  diseases !  The  scattered  telegraph-offices  along  the  rail- 
road are  all  built  with  two  roofs,  a  couple  of  feet  apart,  that 
the  free  passage  of  air  may  partially  counteract  the  fearful 
down-beating  of  the  sun.  There  are  oases  in  the  desert,  too, 
chief  of  which  are  the  narrow  valleys  of  the  Mojave  River 
and  the  lower  Colorado.  It  is  a  strange  thing  to  see  that 
soft  green  ribbon  athwart  the  molten  landscape — between 
lines  as  sharp-drawn  as  a  fence,  on  one  side  of  which  all  is 
verdant  life,  and  on  the  other,  but  a  foot  away,  all  death  and 
desolation. 

The  contorted  ranges,  which  seem  to  have  been  dropped 
down  upon  the  waste,  rather  than  upheaved  from  it,  are  very 
rich  in  gold  and  silver, — a  fact  which  has  lured  countless 


THE  AMERICAN   SAHARA.  33 

victims  to  death.  Then*  strange  colors  have  given  an  appro- 
priate name  to  one  of  the  largest  silver-producing  districts 
in  the  United  States — that  of  Calico.  The  curiously  blended 
browns  and  reds  of  these  igneous  rocks  do  make  them 
strongly  resemble  the  antiquated  calicoes  of  our  grand- 
mothers. 

As  would  be  inferred  from  its  temperature,  the  desert  is  a 
land  of  fearful  winds.  When  that  stupendous  volume  of  hot 
air  rises  by  its  own  lightness — as  hot  air  always  must  rise,  a 
principle  which  was  the  foundation  of  ballooning — other  air 
from  the  surrounding  world  must  rush  in  to  take  its  place ; 
and  as  the  new  ocean  of  atmosphere,  greater  than  the  Medi- 
terranean, pours  in  in  stupendous  waves  to  its  desert  bed, 
such  winds  result  as  few  in  fertile  lands  ever  dreamed  of. 
The  Arabian  simoom  is  not  deadlier  than  the  sand-storm  of 
the  Colorado  Desert  (as  the  lower  half  is  generally  called). 
Express-trains  cannot  make  head  against  it — nay,  they  are 
even  sometimes  forced  from  the  track !  Upon  the  crests  of 
some  of  the  ranges  are  hundreds  of  acres  buried  deep  in  the 
fine,  white  sand  that  those  fearful  gales  pluck  up  by  car-loads 
from  the  plain  and  lift  on  high  to  fling  upon  the  scowling 
peaks  thousands  of  feet  above.  There  are  no  snow-drifts  to 
blockade  trains  there ;  but  it  is  sometimes  necessary  to  shovel 
through  more  troublesome  drifts  of  sand.  Man  or  beast 
<•; illicit  in  one  of  those  sand-laden  tempests  has  little  chance 
of  escape.  The  man  who  will  lie  with  his  head  tightly 
wrapped  in  coat  or  blanket  and  stifle  there  until  the  fury  of 
the  storm  is  spent  may  survive ;  but  woe  to  the  poor  brute 


34    SOME  STEAXGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

whose  swift  feet  cannot  bear  it  betimes  to  a  place  of  refuge. 
There  is  no  facing  or  breathing  that  atmosphere  of  alkaline 
sand,  whose  lightest  whiff  inflames  eyes,  nose,  and  throat 
almost  past  endurance.  The  sand-storm  suffocates  its  vie- 


VIEW    AMONG    THE   CAC1 


tuns  and  buries  them  —  perhaps  to  uncover  them  again  only 
after  the  lapse  of  years. 

The  few  rivers  of  the  American  Desert  are  as  strange  and 
as  treacherous  as  its  winds.  The  Colorado  is  the  only  large 
stream  of  them  all.  and  the  only  one  which  behaves  like  an 
ordinary  river.  It  is  always  turbid— and  gets  its  Spanish 


THE  AMERICAN  SAHARA.  35 

name,  which  means  "  the  Red,"  from  the  color  of  its  tide. 
The  smaller  streams  are  almost  invariably  clear  in  dry 
weather  j  but  in  a  time  of  rain  they  become  torrents  not  so 
much  of  sandy  water  as  of  liquid  sand !  I  have  seen  them 
rolling  down  in  freshets  with  four-foot  waves  which  seemed 
simply  sand  in  flow ;  and  it  is  a  fact  that  the  bodies  of  those 
who  are  drowned  at  such  times  are  almost  never  recovered. 
The  strange  river  buries  them  forever  in  its  own  sands.  All 
these  rivers  have  heads ;  but  hardly  one  of  them  has  a  mouth  ! 
They  rise  in  the  mountains  on  the  edge  of  some  happier  land, 
flow  away  out  into  the  desert,  making  a  green  gladness 
where  their  waters  touch,  and  soon  are  swallowed  up  forever 
by  the  thirsty  sands.  The  Mojave,  for  instance,  is  a  beauti- 
ful little  stream,  clear  as  crystal  through  the  summer,  only  a 
foot  or  so  in  depth,  but  a  couple  of  hundred  feet  wide.  It  is 
fifty  or  sixty  miles  long,  and  its  upper  valley  is  a  narrow 
paradise,  green  with  tall  grasses  and  noble  cotton-woods  that 
recall  the  stately  elms  of  the  Connecticut  Valley.  But  lower 
down  the  grass  gives  place  to  barren  sand-banks ;  the  hard- 
ier trees,  whose  roots  bore  deep  to  drink,  grow  small  and 
straggling ;  and  at  last  it  dies  altogether  upon  the  arid  plain, 
and  leaves  beyond  a  desert  as  utter  as  that  which  crowds  its 
whole  bright  oasis-ribbon  on  either  side  but  cannot  encroach 
thereon. 

It  is  a  very  curious  fact  that  this  American  Sahara,  over 
fifteen  hundred  miles  long  from  north  to  south,  and  nearly 
half  as  wide,  serves  to  trip  the  very  seasons.  On  its  one  side 
the  rains  all  come  in  the  summer;  but  on  the  Pacific  side 


36    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

they  are  invariably  in  the  winter,  and  a  shower  between 
March  and  October  is  almost  as  unheard  of  as  the  prover- 
bial thunder  from  a  cloudless  sky. 

In  the  southern  portions  of  the  desert  are  many  strange 
freaks  of  vegetable  life — huge  cacti  sixty  feet  tall,  and  as 
large  around  as  a  barrel,  with  singular  arms  which  make 
them  look  like  gigantic  candelabra  •  smaller  but  equally  fan- 
tastic varieties  of  cactus,  from  the  tall,  lithe  ocalitfa,  or  whip- 
stock  cactus,  down  to  the  tiny  knob  smaller  than  a  china  cup, 
whose  innocent-looking  needles  give  it  a  roseate  halo.  The 
blossoms  of  these  strange  vegetable  pin-cushions  (whose  pins 
all  have  their  points  outward)  are  invariably  brilliant  and 
beautiful.  There  are  countless  more  modest  flowers,  too,  in 
the  rainy  season,  and  thousands  of  square  miles  are  carpeted 
thick  with  a  floral  carpet  which  makes  it  hard  for  the  trav- 
eler to  believe  that  he  is  really  gazing  upon  a  desert.  There 
are  even  date-palms,  those  quaint  ragged  children  of  the  trop- 
ics ;  and  they  have  very  appropriate  company.  Few  people 
are  aware  that  there  are  wild  camels  in  North  America,  but 
it  is  none  the  less  true.  Many  years  ago  a  number  of  these 
"  ships  of  the  desert "  were  imported  from  Africa  by  an  en- 
terprising Yankee  who  purposed  to  use  them  in  freighting 
across  the  American  Sahara.  The  scheme  failed  j  the  camels 
escaped  to  the  desert,  made  themselves  at  home,  and  there 
they  roam  to-day,  wild  as  deer  but  apparently  prospering, 
and  now  and  then  frightening  the  wits  nearly  out  of  some 
ignorant  prospector  who  strays  into  their  grim  domain. 

There  are  in  this  desert  weird  and  deadly  valleys  which 


THE   AMERICAN   SAHARA.  37 

are  hundreds  of  feet  below  the  level  of  the  sea  j  vast  depos- 
its of  pure  salt,  borax,  soda,  and  other  minerals  j  remark- 
able "  mud- volcanoes/7  or  geysers;  wonderful  mirages  «-m<l 
supernatural  atmospheric  effects,  and  many  other  wonders. 
The  intensely  dry  air  is  so  clear  that  distance  seems  annihi- 
lated, and  the  eye  loses  its  reckoning.  Objects  twenty  miles 
away  look  to  be  within  an  easy  half -hour's  walk.  There  are 
countless  dry  beds  of  prehistoric  and  accursed  lakes — some 
of  them  of  great  extent — in  whose  alkaline  dust  no  plant 
can  grow,  and  upon  which  a  puddle  of  rain-water  becomes- 
an  almost  deadly  poison.  In  the  mountain-passes  are  trails 
where  the  pattering  feet  of  mangy  and  starveling  coyotes  for 
thousands  of  years  have  worn  a  path  six  inches  deep  in  the 
solid  limestone.  Gaunt  ravens  sail  staring  over  the  wan 
plains  j  and  hairy  tarantulas  hop  j  and  the  side-winder — the 
deadly,  horned  rattlesnake  of  the  desert,  which  gets  its  nick- 
name from  its  peculiar  sideling  motion — crawls  across  the 
burning  sands,  or  basks  in  the  terrific  sun  which  only  he  and 
the  lizards,  of  all  created  things,  can  enjoy. 

The  "  Salton  Sea/'  about  which  so  much  undeserved  sensa- 
tion and  mystery  were  made  recently,  is  not  a  sea  at  all,  but 
a  huge  puddle  of  "  back  water  "  from  the  Colorado  River.  It 
had  been  dry  for  a  great  while  j  but  the  river  in  1891,  in  a 
freshet,  broke  its  banks  and  again  filled  the  shallow  basin. 
The  water  is  brackish  because  the  overflowed  valley  contains 
great  salt  deposits. 

The  most  fatally  famous  part  of  the   Great  American 
Desert  is  Death  Valley,  in  California.     There  is  on  all  the 
4 


38    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

globe  no  other  spot  so  forbidding,  so  desolate,  so  deadly.  It 
is  a  concentration  of  the  hideousness  of  that  whole  hideous 
area ;  and  it  has  a  bitter  history. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  and  graphic  stories  I  ever 
listened  to  was  that  related  to  me,  several  years  ago,  by  one 
of  the  survivors  of  the  famous  Death  Valley  party  of  1849 
—  Rev.  J.  W.  Brier,  an  aged  Methodist  clergyman  now  living 
in  California,  who  preached  the  first  Protestant  sermon  in 
Los  Angeles.  A  party  of  five  hundred  emigrants  started 
on  the  last  day  of  September,  1849,  from  the  southern  end 
of  Utah  to  cross  the  desert  to  the  new  mines  of  California. 
There  were  one  hundred  and  five  canvas-topped  wagons, 
drawn  by  sturdy  oxen,  beside  which  trudged  the  shaggy  men, 
rifle  in  hand,  while  under  the  canvas  awnings  rode  the  women 
and  children.  In  a  short  time  there  was  division  of  opinion 
as  to  the  proper  route  across  that  pathless  waste  in  front ; 
and  next  day  five  wagons  and  their  people  went  east  to  reach 
Santa  Fe  (whence  there  were  dim  Mexican  trails  to  Los  An- 
geles), and  the  rest  plunged  boldly  into  the  desert.  The  party 
which  went  via  Santa  Fe  reached  California  in  December, 
after  vast  sufferings.  The  larger  company  traveled  in  com- 
fort for  a  few  days  until  they  reached  about  where  Pioche 
now  is.  Then  they  entered  the  Land  of  Thirst  j  and  for 
more  than  three  months  wandered  lost  in  that  inconceivable 
realm  of  horror.  It  was  almost  impossible  to  get  wagons 
through  a  country  furrowed  with  canons  j  and  presently  they 
abandoned  their  vehicles,  packing  what  they  could  upon  the 
backs  of  the  oxen.  They  struggled  on  to  glittering  lakes, 


THE  AMERICAN   SAHARA. 


39 


only  to  find  them  deadly  poison,  or  but  a  mirage  on  barren 
sands.  Now  and  then  a  wee  spring  in  the  mountains  gave 
them  new  life.  One  by  one  the  oxen  dropped,  day  by  day 
the  scanty  flour  ran  lower.  Nine  young  men,  who  separated 
from  the  rest,  being  stalwart  and  unencumbered  with  fami- 


REV.    J.    W.    BRIER. 


lies,  strayed  into  Death  Valley  ahead  of  the  others,  succumbed 
to  its  deadly  thirst,  and,  crawling  into  a  little  volcanic  bowl 
to  escape  the  cold  winds  of  night,  left  their  cuddled  bones 
there — where  they  were  found  many  years  later  by  Gov- 


40    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

ernor  Blaisdell  and  his  surveyors,  who  gave  Death  Valley  its 
name.  The  valley  lies  in  Inyo  County,  and  is  about  one 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  long.  In  width  it  tapers  from  three 
miles  at  its  southern  end  to  thirty  at  the  northern.  It  is 
over  two  hundred  feet  below  the  sea-level.  Most  of  Inyo 
County  is  a  great  plateau,  averaging  5000  feet  in  altitude ; 
and  in  it,  in  the  south  end  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  range,  tow- 
ers the  loftiest  peak  in  the  United  States — Mount  Whitney, 
15,000  feet.  So,  as  you  may  imagine,  there  is  a  terrible 
"jumping-off-place"  when  one  comes  to  the  brink  of  this 
accursed  valley.  From  5000  feet  above  sea-level  to  200  feet 
~belmv  it  is  a  good  deal  of  a  drop ;  and  in  places  it  fairly  looks 
as  if  one  might  take  it  at  a  single  jump.  The  valley  is  walled 
on  each  side  by  savage  and  appalling  cliffs  which  rise  thou- 
sands of  feet  in  apparently  sheer  walls.  There  are  but  few 
places  where  the  valley  can  well  be  crossed  from  side  to  side ; 
for  by  the  time  one  has  trudged  over  those  miles  of  alkali 
one  is  generally  too  far  gone  to  climb  up  the  farther  rocks 
to  safety.  It  is  the  very  last  place.  There  is  nothing  so 
deadly  even  in  the  hottest  parts  of  Africa.  Not  even  a  bird 
flies  across  that  hideous  waste — nature  is  absolutely  lifeless 
there.  It  is  the  dry est  place  in  the  world — the  place  where  one 
will  soonest  die  of  thirst,  and  where  the  victim  soon  becomes 
a  perfect  mummy.  When  the  melting  snows  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada  come  roaring  down  the  slopes  in  great  torrents,  they 
do  not  reach  the  bottom  of  Death  Valley.  Long  before  the 
stream  can  get  there  it  is  swallowed  up  into  the  thirsty  air 
and  thirstier  sands.  The  main  party  of  pioneers  cr<»--<i 


THE  AMERICAN   SAHARA.  41 

Death  Valley  at  about  the  middle,  where  it  is  but  a  few  miles 
wide,  but  suffered  frightfully  there.  With  every  day  their 
tortures  grew  worse.  The  gaunt  oxen  were  so  nearly  dead 
that  their  meat  was  rank  poison  j  and  at  last  the  starving 
band  had  no  food  for  four  weeks  save  ox-hide  scorched  and 
then  boiled  to  a  bitter  jelly.  Day  by  day  some  of  their  num- 
ber sank  upon  the  burning  sands,  never  to  rise  again.  The 
skeleton  survivors  were  too  weak  to  help  the  fallen.  One 
poor  fellow  named  Isham  revived  enough  to  crawl  four  awful 
miles  on  his  hands  and  knees  in  pursuit  of  his  companions, 
and  then  died. 

The  strongest  of  the  whole  party  was  wee,  nervous  Mrs. 
Brier,  who  had  come  to  Colorado  an  invalid,  and  who  shared 
with  her  boys  of  four,  seven,  and  nine  years  that  indescriba- 
ble tramp  of  nine  hundred  miles.  For  the  last  three  weeks 
she  had  to  lift  her  athletic  husband  from  the  ground  every 
morning,  and  steady  him  a  few  moments  before  he  could 
stand;  and  help  wasted  giants  who  a  few  months  before 
could  have  held  her  upon  their  palms. 

At  last  the  few  dying  survivors  crossed  the  range  which 
shuts  off  that  most  dreadful  of  deserts  from  the  garden  of  the 
world,  and  were  tenderly  nursed  to  health  at  the  hacienda  of 
a  courtly  Spaniard.  Mr.  Brier  had  wasted  from  one  hundred 
and  seventy-five  pounds  to  seventy-five,  and  the  others  in 
proportion.  When  I  saw  him  last  he  was  a  hale  old  man  of 
seventy-five,  cheerful  and  active,  but  with  strange  furrows  in 

I  his  face  to  tell  of  those  by-gone  sufferings.  His  heroic  little 
wife  was  still  living,  and  the  boys,  who  had  had  a  bitter  ex 


;. 


TJNI 


42    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

perience  such  as  perhaps  no  other  boys  ever  survived,  are 
stalwart  men. 

The  Great  American  Desert  reaches  from  Idaho  to  the 
Gulf  of  California  and  down  into  Mexico;  and  embraces 
portions  of  Idaho,  Wyoming,  Utah,  Nevada,  Arizona,  and 
California.  There  have  been  numerous  schemes  to  reclaim 
parts  of  it — even  to  turning  the  Colorado  River  into  its 
southern  basins — but  all  the  ingenuity  of  man  will  never 
change  most  of  it  from  the  irredeemable  and  fearful  wil- 
derness it  is  to-day. 


IV 


THE  RATTLESNAKE  DANCE. 


and  about  the  edges  of  the  Great  American 
Desert  are  many  of  the  strangest  corners.  It 
seems  as  if  Nature  has  crowded  her  curiosities 
into  that  strangest  and  most  forbidding  of  mu- 
seums, that  they  may  not  be  too  easily  found. 
A  hundred  miles  north  of  the  Petrified  Forest,  and  well 
into  the  edge  of  the  Arizona  desert,  are  the  seven  strange 
and  seldom  visited  Pueblo  cities  of  Moqui.  They  all  have 
wildly  unpronounceable  names :  Hualpi,  Si-chom-ivi,  Shim- 
o-pavi,  Shi-paui-luvi,  Oraibe,  and  Mishongop-avi ;  and  all  are 
built  on  the  summits  of  almost  inaccessible  mesas — islands 
of  solid  rock,  whose  generally  perpendicular  cliff -walls  rise 
high  from  the  surrounding  plain.  They  are  very  remarka- 
ble towns  in  appearance,  set  upon  dizzy  sites,  with  quaint 
terraced  houses  of  abode,  and  queer  little  corrals  for  the  ani- 
mals in  nooks  and  angles  of  the  cliff,  and  giving  far  outlook 
across  the  browns  and  yellows,  and  the  spectral  peaks  of  that 
weird  plain.  But  they  look  not  half  so  remarkable  as  they 
are.  The  most  remote  from  civilization  of  all  the  Pueblos, 
the  least  affected  by  the  Spanish  influence  which  so  wonder- 


TIIK    KATTLKSXAKK    DAXrK.  45 

fully  ruled  over  the  enormous  area  of  the  southwest,  and 
praetically  untouched  by  the  later  Saxon  influence,  the  In- 
dians of  the  Moqui  towns  retain  almost  entirely  their  wonder- 
ful customs  of  before  the  conquest.  They  number  eighteen 
hundred  souls.  Their  languages  are  different  from  those  of 
any  other  of  the  Pueblos  •*  and  their  mode  of  life — though  to 
a  hasty  glance  the  same — is  in  many  ways  unlike  that  of 
their  brethren  in  New  Mexico.  They  are  the  best  weavers 
in  America,  except  the  once  remarkable  but  now  less  skilful 
Navajos;  and  their  manias  (the  characteristic  black  woolen 
dresses  of  Pueblo  women)  and  dancing-girdles  are  so  famous 
that  the  Indians  of  th,e  Bio  Grande  valley  often  travel  three 
hundred  miles  or  more,  on  foot  or  on  deliberate  burros, 
simply  to  trade  for  the  long- wearing  products  of  the  rude, 
home-made  looms  of  Moqui.  The  Moquis  also  make  valu- 
able and  very  curious  fur  blankets  by  twisting  the  skins  of 
rabbits  into  ropes,  and  then  sewing  these  together — a  cus- 
tom which  Coronado  found  among  them  three  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago,  before  there  were  any  sheep  to  yield  wool  for 
such  fabrics  as  they  now  weave,  and  when  their  only  dress 
materials  were  skins  and  the  cotton  they  raised. 

It  is  in  these  strange,  cliff-perched  little  cities  of  the  Hiipi 
("  the  people  of  peace,"  as  the  Moquis  call  themselves)  that 
one  of  the  most  astounding  barbaric  dances  in  the  world  is 
held  j  for  it  even  yet  exists.  Africa  has  no  savages  whose 

*  Except  that  the  one  Moqui  village  of  Tehua  speaks  the  language  of 
the  Tehuas  on  the  Rio  Grande,  whence  its  people  came  as  refugees 
after  the  great  Pueblo  Rebellion  of  1680. 


46    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

mystic  performances  are  more  wonderful  than  the  Moqui 
snake-dance — and  as  much  may  be  said  for  many  of  the 
other  secret  rites  of  the  Pueblos. 

The  snake  is  an  object  of  great  respect  among  all  uncivil- 
ized peoples  j  and  the  deadlier  his  power,  the  deeper  the  rev- 
erence for  him.  The  Pueblos  often  protect  in  their  houses 
an  esteemed  and  harmless  serpent — about  five  or  six  feet 
long — as  a  mouse- trap ;  and  these  quiet  mousers  keep  down 
the  little  pests  much  more  effectively  than  a  cat,  for  they  can 
follow  shee-id-deh  to  the  ultimate  corner  of  his  hole. 

But  while  all  snakes  are  to  be  treated  well,  the  Pueblo 
holds  the  rattlesnake  actually  sacred.  It  is,  except  the  picliu- 
cudte  (a  real  asp),  the  only  venomous  reptile  in  the  southwest, 
and  the  only  one  dignified  by  a  place  among  the  "  Trues." 
The  cKah-rcth-rdh-deh  *  is  not  really  worshiped  by  the  Pueblos, 
but  they  believe  it  one  of  the  sacred  animals  which  are  use- 
ful to  the  Trues,  and  ascribe  to  it  wonderful  powers.  Up  to 
a  generation  ago  it  played  in  the  marvelous  and  difficult  su- 
perstitions of  this  people  a  much  more  important  part  than 
it  does  now ;  and  every  Pueblo  town  used  to  maintain  a  huge 
rattlesnake,  which  was  kept  in  a  sacred  room,  and  with  great 
solemnity  fed  once  a  year.  My  own  pueblo  of  Isleta  used  to 
support  a  sacred  rattler  in  the  volcanic  caves  of  the  Cerro 
del  Aire,t  but  it  escaped  five  years  ago,  and  the  patient 
search  of  the  officials  failed  to  recover  it.  Very  truthful  old 

*  The  Tee-wahn  name  is  imitative,  resembling  the  rattling.     The 
Moquis  call  the  rattlesnake  clni-ali. 
t  Hill  of  the  wind. 


48    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

men  here  have  told  me  that  it  was  nearly  as  large  around  as 
my  body  j  and  I  can  believe  it  with  just  a  little  allowance,  for 
I  myself  have  seen  one  here  as  large  as  the  thickest  part  of 
my  leg. 

There  are  many  gruesome  stories  of  human  sacrifices  to 
these  snakes;  the  commonest  tale  being  that  a  baby  was 
chosen  by  lot  from  the  pueblo  once  a  year  to  be  fed  to  ch'aJi- 
rah-rdh-deJt.  But  this  is  of  course  a  foolish  fable.  There  are 
no  traces  that  the  Pueblos  ever  practised  human  sacrifice  in 
any  shape,  even  in  prehistoric  times  j  and  the  very  grand- 
father of  all  the  rattlesnakes  could  no  more  swallow  the 
smallest  baby  than  he  could  fly. 

This  snake-tending  has  died  out  in  nearly — and  now,  per- 
haps, in  quite — all  the  New  Mexican  pueblos;  but  the  curi- 
ous trait  still  survives  in  the  towns  of  Moqui.  Every  second 
year,  when  the  August  moon  reaches  a  certain  stage  (in  1891 
it  occurred  on  the  21st),  the  wonderful  ceremony  of  the  snake- 
dance  is  performed;  and  the  white  men  who  have  witnessed 
these  weird  rites  will  never  forget  them. 

For  sixteen  days  beforehand  the  professional  "  Snake-men  " 
have  been  in  solemn  preparation  for  the  great  event,  sit- 
ting in  their  sacred  rooms,  which  are  carved  in  the  solid 
rock.  For  many  days  before  the  dance  (as  before  nearly 
all  such  ceremonies  with  the  Pueblos)  no  food  must  pass 
their  lips,  and  they  can  drink  only  a  bitter  "  tea,"  called  imih- 
gwe-fo*,  made  from  a  secret  herb  which  gives  them  security 
against  snake-poison.  They  also  rub  their  bodies  with  pre- 
pared herbs. 


THE  RATTLESNAKE  DANCE.  49 

Six  days  before  the  date  of  the  dance  the  Snake-men  go 
down  the  mesa  into  the  plain  and  hunt  eastward  for  rattle- 
snakes. Upon  finding  one,  the  hunter  tiekles  the  angry  rep- 
tile with  the  "  snake- whip  " — a  sacred  bunch  of  eagle  feathers 
—  until  it  tries  to  run.  Then  he  snatches  it  up  and  puts  it 
into  a  bag.  On  the  next  day  the  hunt  is  to  the  north;  the 
third  day  to  the  west ;  the  fourth  day  to  the  south — which  is, 
you  must  know,  the  only  possible  order  in  which  a  Pueblo 
dares  to  "box  the  compass."  To  start  first  south  or  north 
would  be  a  dreadful  impiety  in  his  eyes.  The  captured 
snakes  are  then  kept  in  the  kibva  (sacred  room  called  "  estufa  " 
in  the  other  pueblos),  where  they  crawl  about  in  dangerous 
freedom  among  the  solemn  deliberators.  The  night  before 
the  dance  the  snakes  are  all  cleansed  with  great  solemnity  at 
an  altar  which  the  Snake-captain  has  made  of  colored  sands 
drawn  in  a  strange  design. 

The  place  where  the  dance  is  held  is  a  small  open  court, 
with  the  three-story  houses  crowding  it  on  the  west,  and  the 
brink  of  the  cliff  bounding  it  on  the  east.  Several  sacred 
rooms,  hollowed  from  the  rock,  are  along  this  court,  and  the 
tall  ladders  which  lead  into  them  are  visible  in  the  picture. 
At  the  south  end  of  the  court  stands  the  sacred  Dance-rock 
—a  natural  pillar,  about  fourteen  feet  high,  left  by  water- 
wearing  upon  the  rock  floor  of  the  mesa's  top.  Midway  from 
this  to  the  north  end  of  the  court  has  been  constructed  the 
kee-si,  or  sacred  booth  of  cotton- wood  branches,  its  opening 
closed  by  a  curtain.  Just  in  front  of  this  a  shallow  cavity 
has  been  dug,  and  then  covered  with  a  strong  and  ancient 
5 


50    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

plank  with  a  hole  in  one  side.  This  covered  cavity  repre- 
sents Shi-pa-pii,  the  great  Black  Lake  of  Tears, — a  name  so 
sacred  that  few  Indians  will  speak  it  aloud, — whence,  accord- 
ing to  the  common  belief  of  all  southwestern  Indians,  the 
human  race  first  came. 

On  the  day  of  the  dance  the  Captain  of  the  Snake-men 
places  all  the  snakes  in  a  large  buckskin  bag,  and  deposits 
this  in  the  booth.  All  the  other  active  participants  are  still 
in  their  room,  going  through  their  mysterious  preparations. 
Just  before  sunset  is  the  invariable  time  for  the  dance. 

Long  before  the  hour,  the  housetops  and  the  edges  of  the 
court  are  lined  with  an  expectant  throng  of  spectators :  the 
earnest  Moquis,  a  goodly  representation  of  the  Navajos,  whose 
reservation  lies  just  east,  and  a  few  white  men.  At  about 
half -past  five  in  the  afternoon  the  twenty  men  of  the  Ante- 
lope Order  emerge  from  their  own  special  room  in  single  file, 
march  thrice  around  the  court,  and  go  through  certain  sa- 
cred ceremonies  in  front  of  the  booth. '  Here  their  captain 
sprinkles  them  with  a  consecrated  fluid  from  the  tip  of  an 
eagle  feather.  For  a  few  moments  they  dance  and  shake 
their  guajes  (ceremonial  rattles  made  of  gourds)  in  front  of 
the  booth;  and  then  they  are  ranged  beside  it,  with  their 
backs  against  the  wall  of  the  houses.  Among  them  are  the 
youngsters  that  day  admitted  to  the  order  in  which  they  will 
thenceforward  receive  life-long  training — dimpled  tots  of 
from  four  to  seven  years  old,  who  look  extremely  "  cunning  " 
in  their  strange  regimentals. 

Now  all  is  ready  j  and  in  a  moment  a  buzz  in  the  crowd 


THE  RATTLESNAKE  DANCE.  53 

announces  the  coming  of  the  seventeen  priests  of  the  Snake 
Order  through  the  roofed  alley  just  south  of  the  Dance-rock. 
These  seventeen  enter  the  court  in  a  single  file  at  a  rapid 
gait,  and  make  the  circuit  of  the  court  four  times,  stamping 
hard  with  the  right  foot  upon  the  sacred  plank  that  covers 
Shi-pa-pii  as  they  pass  in  front  of  the  booth.  This  is  to  let 
the  Cachinas  (spirits,  or  divinities)  know  that  the  dancers  are 
now  presenting  their  prayers. 

When  the  captain  of  the  Snake  Order  reaches  the  booth, 
on  the  fourth  circuit,  the  procession  halts.  The  captain 
kneels  in  front  of  the  booth,  thrusts  his  right  arm  behind  the 
curtain,  unties  the  sack,  and  in  a  moment  draws  out  a  big, 
squirming  rattlesnake.  This  he  holds  with  his  teeth  about 
six  inches  back  of  the  ugly  triangular  head,  and  then  he  rises 
erect.  The  Captain  of  the  Antelope  Order  steps  forward  and 
puts  his  left  arm  around  the  Snake-captain's  neck,  while  with 
the  snake-whip  in  his  right  hand  he  "  smooths  "  the  writhing 
reptile.  The  two  start  forward  in  the  peculiar  hippety-hop, 
hop,  hippety-hop  of  all  Pueblo  dances ;  the  next  Snake-priest 
draws  forth  a  snake  from  the  booth,  and  is  joined  by  the 
next  Antelope-man  as  partner ;  and  so  on,  until  each  of  the 
Snake-men  is  dancing  with  a  deadly  snake  in  his  mouth,  and 
an  Antelope-man  accompanying  him. 

The  dancers  hop  in  pairs  thus  from  the  booth  to  the  Dance- 
rock,  thence  north,  and  circle  toward  the  booth  again. 
When  they  reach  a  certain  point,  which  completes  about 
three-quarters  of  the  circle,  each  Snake-man  gives  his  head  a 
sharp  snap  to  the  left,  and  thereby  throws  his  snake  to  the 


54     SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

rock  floor  of  the  court,  inside  the  ring  of  dancers,  and  dances 
on  to  the  booth  again,  to  extract  a  fresh  snake  and  make 
another  round. 

There  are  three  more  Antelope-men  than  Snake-men,  and 
these  three  have  no  partners  in  the  dance,  but  are  intrusted 
with  the  duty  of  gathering  up  the  snakes  thus  set  free  and 
putting  them  back  into  the  booth.  The  snakes  sometimes 
run  to  the  crowd — a  ticklish  affair  for  those  jammed  upon 
the  very  brink  of  the  precipice.  In  case  they  run,  the  three 
official  gatherers  snatch  them  up  without  ado  j  but  if  they 
coil  and  show  fight,  these  Antelope-men  tickle  them  with  the 
snake-whips  until  they  uncoil  and  try  to  glide  away,  and  then 
seize  them  with  the  rapidity  of  lightning.  Frequently  these 
gatherers  have  five  or  six  snakes  in  their  hands  at  once. 
The  reptiles  are  as  deadly  as  ever — not  one  has  had  its 
fangs  extracted ! 

In  the  1891  dance  over  one  hundred  snakes  were  used. 
Of  these  about  sixty-five  were  rattlesnakes.  I  stood  within 
six  feet  of  the  circle;  and  one  man  (a  dancer)  who  came 
close  to  me  was  bitten.  The  snake  which  he  held  in  his 
mouth  suddenly  turned  and  struck  him  upon  the  right  cheek. 
His  Antelope  companion  unhooked  the  snake,  which  hung  by 
its  recurving  fangs,  and  threw  it  upon  the  ground ;  and  the 
pair  continued  the  dance  as  if  nothing  had  happened  !  An- 
other man  a  little  farther  from  me,  but  plainly  seen,  was  bit- 
ten on  the  hand. 

I  never  knew  one  of  them  to  be  seriously  affected  by  a 
rattlesnake's  bite.  They  pay  no  attention  to  the  (to  others) 


THE   RATTLESNAKE  DANCE.  55 

deadly  stroke  of  that  hideous  mouth,  which  opens  flat  as  a 
palm  and  smites  exactly  like  one,  but  dance  and  sing  in  ear- 
nest unconcern.  There  is  in  existence  one  photograph  which 
clearly  shows  the  dancers  with  the  snakes  in  their  mouths — 
and  only  one.  Beginning  so  late,  and  in  the  deep  shadow 
of  the  tall  houses,  it  is  almost  impossible  for  the  dance  to  be 
photographed  at  all ;  but  one  year  a  lucky  reflector  of  dense 
white  cloud  came  up  just  before  sunset  and  threw  a  light  into 
that  dark  corner,  and  Mr.  Wittick  got  the  only  perfect  pic- 
ture extant  of  the  snake-dance.  I  have  made  pictures  which 
do  show  the  snakes  ;  but  they  are  not  handsome  pictures  of 
the  dance.  The  make-up  of  the  dancers  makes  photography 
still  harder.  Their  faces  are  painted  black  to  the  mouth,  and 
white  from  that  to  the  neck.  Their  bodies,  naked  to  the 
waist,  are  painted  a  dark  lake-red.  They  wear  curious  danc- 
ing-skirts to  the  knee,  with  beautiful  fox-skins  dangling  be- 
hind, but  nothing  on  their  legs  except  rattles  and  sacred 
twigs  at  the  ankle. 

At  last  all  rush  together  at  the  foot  of  the  Dance-rock  and 
throw  all  their  snakes  into  a  horrid  heap  of  threatening  heads 
and  buzzing  tails.  I  have  seen  that  hillock  of  rattlesnakes  a 
foot  high  and  four  feet  across.  For  a  moment  the  dancers 
leap  about  the  writhing  pile,  while  the  sacred  corn-meal  is 
sprinkled.  Then  they  thrust  each  an  arm  into  that  squirming 
mass,  grasp  a  number  of  snakes,  and  go  running  at  top 
speed  to  the  four  points  of  the  compass.  Reaching  the  bot- 
tom of  the  great  mesa  (Hualpi,*  where  the  chief  snake-dance 
*  Pronounced  Wol-pi. 


56    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

is  held,  is  six  hundred  and  sixty  feet  above  the  plain),  they 
release  the  unharmed  serpents. 

These  astounding  rites  last  from  half  an  hour  to  an  hour, 
and  end  only  when  the  hot  sun  has  fallen  behind  the  bald 
western  desert.  Then  the  dancers  go  to  their  sacred  purifi- 
cation with  the  secret  herb,  and  the  awed  on-lookers  scatter 
to  their  quaint  homes,  rejoicing  at  the  successful  conclusion 
of  the  most  important  of  all  the  public  ceremonials  of  Moqui. 
It  is  believed  by  the  Hiipi  that  the  rattlesnake  was  one  of 
their  first  ancestors — the  son  of  the  Moqui  Adam  and  Eve— 
and  they  have  a  very  long  and  complicated  folk-story  about 
it.  The  snake- dance  is  therefore — among  other  superstitious 
aims — designed  to  please  their  divinities. 

In  the  "neck"  or  "saddle"  which  connects  the  first  of  the 
Moqui  "  islands  "  of  rock  with  the  main  table-land  is  a  shrine 
of  great  importance.  It  is  a  little  inclosure  of  slabs  of  stone 
surrounding  a  large  stone  fetich  which  has  been  carved  into 
a  conventional  representation  of  the  sacred  snake.  In  two 
small  natural  cavities  of  the  Dance-rock  are  also  kept  other 
large  fetiches — both  the  latter  being  limestone  concretions 
of  peculiar  shape. 

This  snake-dance  seems  to  have  been  common  to  all  the 
Pueblo  towns  in  ancient  times.  Espejo  saw  it  in  Acoma  in 
1581 ;  and  there  are  to  this  day  in  other  towns  customs  which 
seem  to  be  survivals  of  this  strange  ceremony.  In  Isleta 
there  are  still  men  who  have  "  power  of  snakes,"  and  know 
how  to  charm  them  by  putting  the  sacred  corn-meal  and  corn- 
pollen  on  their  heads  —  a  practice  which  figures  extensively 
in  their  folk-lore. 


THE  RATTLESNAKE  DANCE.  57 

The  Moquis  make  great  numbers  of  remarkable-looking 
dolls  for  their  children  to  play  with;  and  in  nearly  every 
house  some  of  these  strange  effigies  are  to  be  seen.  They 
are  toys  for  the  youngsters,  but  not  merely  toys — they  are 
also  a  sort  of  kindergarten  course.  They  are  called  cachinas, 
and  are  supposed  to  represent  the  spirits  in  which  the  Mo- 
queiios  believe.  They  are  very  clever  representations  of  the 
outlandish  figures  of  the  masked  men  who  take  part  in  many 
ceremonial  dances — these  maskers,  of  course,  being  also  sup- 
posed to  look  like  the  unseen  but  potent  spirits.  So  a  Moqui 
child  veiy  soon  learns  what  the  various  spirits  look  like. 

One  of  the  oddities  which  a  stranger  will  first  notice  in 
Moqui  is  the  fashion  in  which  the  women  dress  their  hair. 
The  young  girls  have  their  abundant  black  locks  done  up  in 
two  large  and  very  peculiar  coils,  one  behind  each  ear.  These 
coils  stand  far  out  from  the  head,  like  huge  black  buttons,  and 
give  a  startling  appearance  to  the  wearer.  Sometimes  you 
would  fancy  that  she  has  a  pair  of  short,  curving  horns.  But 
on  close  inspection  one  of  these  coils  is  found  to  resemble 
nothing  else  so  much  as  a  black  squash-blossom  in  its  full 
bloom — and  that  is  exactly  what  it  is  designed  to  typify. 
Among  the  Hiipi  the  squash-blossom  is  the  emblem  of 
maidenhood.  Before  marriage  a  girl  must  always  wear  her 
hair  thus ;  but  after  marriage  she  must  dress  it  in  two  pen- 
dent rolls,  one  by  each  ear.  These  rolls  are  supposed  to  re- 
semble— and  do  resemble — the  long,  closed  squash-blossom. 


WHERE  THEY  BEG  THE  BEAR'S  PARDON. 

}T  is  interesting  to  notice  that  the  Navajo  Indians, 
who  are  the  nearest  neighbors  of  the  Moquis, 
have  superstitions  widely  different  though  quite 
as  benighted.  They  will  not  touch  a  snake  un- 
der any  circumstances.  So  extreme  are  their 
prejudices  that  one  of  their  skilled  silversmiths  was  beaten 
nearly  to  death  by  his  fellows  for  making  to  my  order  a  sil- 
ver bracelet  which  represented  a  rattlesnake;  and  the  ob- 
noxious emblem  was  promptly  destroyed  by  the  raiders — 
along  with  the  offender's  hut; 

Living  almost  wholly  upon  game  as  they  do,  the  Navajos 
cannot  be  prevailed  upon  to  taste  either  fish  or  rabbit.  I 
have  known  some  very  ludicrous  things  to  happen  when 
meanly  mischievous  Americans  deluded  Navajos  into  eat- 
ing either  of  these  forbidden  dishes;  and  sometimes  there 
have  been  very  serious  retaliations  for  the  ill-mannered  joke. 
Rabbits  are  wonderfully  numerous  in  the  Navajo  country, 
being  molested  only  by  feathered  and  four-footed  enemies ; 
but  the  Indian  who  would  fight  to  the  death  sooner  than 
touch  a  delicious  rabbit-stew  is  greedily  fond  of  the  fat  and 


WHERE   THEY  BEG  THE  BEAR'S  PARDON.  59 

querulous  prairie-dog.  That  whole  region  abounds  in  "  dog- 
towns/7  and  they  are  frequently  besieged  by  their  swarthy 
foes.  A  Navajo  will  stick  a  bit  of  mirror  in  the  entrance  of 
a  burrow,  and  lie  behind  the  little  mound  all  day,  if  need 
be,  to  secure,  the  coveted  prize.  When  Mr.  Tusa  ventures 
from  his  bedroom,  deep  underground,  he  sees  a  familiar  im- 
age mocking  him  at  the  front  door  j  and  when  he  hurries 
out  to  confront  this  impudent  intruder,  whiz !  goes  a  chal- 
cedony-tipped arrow  through  him,  pinning  him  to  the  ground 
so  that  he  cannot  tumble  back  into  his  home,  as  he  has  a 
wonderful  faculty  for  doing  even  in  death  •  or  a  dark  hand 
-  darts  from  behind  like  lightning,  seizes  his  chunky  neck 
safely  beyond  the  reach  of  his  chisel-shaped  teeth,  and  breaks 
his  spine  with  one  swift  snap. 

But  when  the  summer  rains  come,  then  is  woe  indeed  to 
the  populous  communities  of  these  ludicrous  little  rodents. 
As  soon  as  the  downpour  begins,  every  adjacent  Navajo  be- 
tween the  ages  of  three  and  ninety  repairs  to  the  tusa  vil- 
lage. They  bring  rude  hoes,  sharpened  sticks,  and  knives,  and 
every  one  who  is  able  to  dig  at  all  falls  to  work,  unmind- 
ful of  the  drenching.  In  a  very  short  time  a  lot  of  little 
trenches  are  dug,  so  as  to  lead  the  storm- water  to  the  mouths 
of  as  many  burrows  as  possible ;  and  soon  a  little  stream  is 
pouring  down  each. 

v  Mercy !  "  says  Mr.  Tusa  to  his  fat  wife  and  dozen  chubby 
youngsters ;  "  I  wish  we  could  elect  aldermen  that  would  at- 
tend to  the  drainage  of  this  town !  It 's  a  shame  to  have  our 
tsellars  flooded  like  this !  " — and  out  he  pops  to  see  what  can 


60    SOME  STRANGE  COENEES  OF  OUE  COUNTRY. 

be  done.  The  only  thing  he  can  do  is  to  swell  the  sad  heap 
of  his  fellow-citizens,  over  which  strange  two-footed  babies, 
far  bigger  than  his,  are  shouting  in  wild  glee.  Such  a  rain- 
hunt  often  nets  the  Navajos  many  hundred  pounds  of  prairie- 
dogs  j  and  then  there  is  feasting  for  many  a  day  in  the  rude, 
cold  hogans,  or  huts  of  sticks  and  dirt  which  are  the  only 
habitation  of  these  Indians. 

With  the  Pueblos,  the  mountain-lion  or  cougar  is  the  king 
of  beasts — following  our  civilized  idea  very  closely;  but 
with  the  Navajos  the  bear  holds  first  rank.  He  is  not  only 
the  greatest,  wisest,  and  most  powerful  of  brutes,  but  even 
surpasses  man  !  The  Navajo  is  a  brave  and  skilled  warrior, 
and  would  not  fear  the  bear  for  its  deadly  teeth  and  claws, 
but  of  its  supposed  supernatural  powers  he  is  in  mortal 
dread.  I  have  offered  a  Navajo  shepherd,  who  had  accident- 
ally discovered  a  bear's  cave,  twenty  dollars  to  show  it  to  me, 
or  even  to  tell  me  in  what  canon  it  lay ;  but  he  refused,  in  a 
manner  and  with  words  which  showed  me  that  if  I  found  the 
cave  I  would  be  in  danger  from  more  than  the  bear.  The 
Indian  was  a  very  good  friend  of  mine,  too  j  but  he  was  sure 
that  if  he  were  even  the  indirect  cause  of  any  harm  to  the 
bear,  the  bear  would  know  it  and  kill  him  and  all  his  family ! 
So  even  my  princely  offer  was  no  inducement  to  a  man  who 
was  working  hard  for  five  dollars  a  month. 

There  is  only  one  case  in  which  the  Navajos  will  meddle 
with  a  bear.  That  is  when  he  has  killed  a  Navajo,  and  the 
Indians  know  exactly  which  bear  is  the  murderer.  Then  a 
strong,  armed  party,  headed  by  the  proper  religious  officers 


WHERE  THEY  BEG  THE  BEAR'S  PARDON.  61 

(medicine-men),  proceed  to  the  cave  of  the  bear.  Halting  a 
short  distance  in  front  of  the  den,  they  go  through  a  strange 
service  of  apology,  which  to  us  would  seem  entirely  ludicrous, 
but  to  them  is  unutterably  solemn.  The  praises  of  the  Ix-nr, 
commander  of  beasts,  are  loudly  sung,  and  his  pardon  is 
humbly  invoked  for  the  unpleasant  deed  to  which  they  are 
now  driven  !  Having  duly  apologized  beforehand,  they  pro- 
ceed as  best  they  may  to  kill  the  bear,  and  then  go  home  to 
fast  and  purify  themselves.  This  aboriginal  greeting,  "I 
beg  your  pardon,  and  hope  you  will  bear  no  resentment 
against  me,  but  I  have  come  to  kill  you,"  is  quite  as  funny  as 
the  old  farmer  I  used  to  know  in  New  Hampshire,  who  was 
none  too  polite  to  his  wife,  but  always  addressed  his  oxen 
thus :  "  Now,  if  you  please,  whoa  hish,  Bary !  Also  Bonny ! 
There  !  Thank  you  !  " 

The  Navajos  also  make  frequent  prayers  and  sacrifices  to 
the  bear. 

Under  no  circumstances  will  a  Navajo  touch  even  the  skin 
of  a  bear.  The  equally  dangerous  mountain-lion  he  hunts 
eagerly,  and  its  beautiful,  tawny  hide  is  his  proudest  trophy 
outside  of  war,  and  the  costliest  material  for  his  quivers, 
bow-cases,  and  rifle-sheaths.  Nor  will  he  touch  a  coyote. 

A  Navajo  will  never  enter  a  house  in  which  death  has 
been,  and  his  wild  domain  is  full  of  huts  abandoned  forever. 
Nor  after  he  is  married  dare  he  ever  see  his  wife's  mother ; 
and  if  by  any  evil  chance  he  happens  to  catch  a  glimpse  of 
her,  it  takes  a  vast  amount  of  fasting  and  prayer  before  he 
feels  secure  from  dangerous  results.  The  grayest  and  most 
6 


62 


SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 


dignified  chief  is  not  above  walking  backward,  running  like 
a  scared  boy,  or  hiding  his  head  in  his  blanket,  to  avoid  the 
dreaded  sight. 

Feathers  figure  very  prominently  in  the  religious  customs 
of  most  aborigines,  and  remarkably  so  in  the  southwest. 
Among  Navajos  and  Pueblos  alike  these  plume-symbols  are 


-V-f  — \T-^'';W 


PUEBLO    PRAYER-STICKS. 


of  the  utmost  efficacy  for  good  or  bad.  They  are  part  of  al- 
most every  ceremonial  of  the  infinite  superstitions  of  these 
tribes.  Any  white  or  bright-hued  plume  is  of  good  omen— 
"good  medicine/'  as  the  Indian  would  put  it.  The  gay 
feathers  of  the  parrot  are  particularly  valuable,  and  some 
dances  cannot  be  held  without  them,  though  the  Indians  have 
to  travel  hundreds  of  miles  into  Mexico  to  get  them.  A  pea- 


WHERE   THEY  BEG   THE   BEAR'S   PARDON.  63 

cock  is  harder  to  keep  in  the  vicinity  of  Indians  than  the 
finest  horse — those  brilliant  plumes  are  too  tempting. 

Eagle  feathers  are  of  sovereign  value  j  and  in  most  of  the 
pueblos  great,  dark,  captive  eagles  are  kept  to  furnish  the 
coveted  articles  for  most  important  occasions.  If  the  bird  of 
freedom  were  suddenly  exterminated  now,  the  whole  Indian 
economy  would  come  to  a  standstill.  No  witches  could  be 
exorcised,  nor  sickness  cured,  nor  much  of  anything  else 
accomplished. 

Dark  feathers,  and  those  in  particular  of  the  owl,  buzzard, 
woodpecker,  and  raven,  are  unspeakably  accursed.  No  one 
will  touch  them  except  those  who  "  have  the  evil  road," — that 
is,  are  witches, — and  any  Indian  found  with  them  in  his  or 
her  possession  would  be  officially  tried  and  officially  put  to 
death  !  Such  feathers  are  used  only  in  secret  by  those  who 
wish  to  kill  or  harm  an  enemy,  in  whose  path  they  are  laid 
with  wicked  wishes  that  ill-fortune  may  follow. 

How  many  of  my  young  countrymen  who  have  read  of 
the  "  prayer- wheels "  of  Burmah,  and  the  paper  prayers  of 
the  Chinese,  know  that  there  is  a  mechanical  prayer  used 
by  thousands  of  people  in  the  United  States  ?'  The  Pueblo 
"prayer-stick"  is  quite  as  curious  a  device  as  those  of  the 
heathen  Orient ;  and  the  feather  is  the  chief  part  of  it. 

Prowling  in  sheltered  ravines  about  any  Pueblo  town,  the 
curiosity-seeker  will  find,  stuck  in  the  ground,  carefully 
whittled  sticks,  each  with  a  tuft  of  downy  feathers  (generally 
white)  bound  at  the  top. 

Each  of  these  sticks  is  a  prayer — and  none  the  less  earnest 


64 


SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 


and  sincere  because  so  misguided.  Around  the  remote  pue- 
blo of  Zuni  I  have  counted  over  three  thousand  of  these 
strange  invocations  in  one  day's  ramble  ;  but  never  a  tithe 
as  many  by  any  other  pueblo. 

According  to  the  nature  of  the  prayer,  the  stick,  the 
feathers,  and  the  manner  of  tying  them  vary.  The  Indian 
who  has  a  favor  to  ask  of  the  Trues  prepares  his  feather- 
prayer  with  great  solemnity  and  secrecy,  takes  it  to  a  proper 
spot,  prays  to  all  Those  Above,  and  plants  the  prayer-stick 
that  it  may  continue  his  petition  after  he  has  gone  home. 

This  use  of  the  feather  is  also  shared  by  the  Navajos  j  and 
so  is  what  may  be  called  the  smoke-prayer,  in  which  the 
smoke  of  the  sacred  cigarette  is  blown  east,  north,  west, 
south,  up  and  down,  to  scare  away  the  evil  spirits  and  please 
the  good  ones. 

In  a  corner  of  the  Navajo  country,  too,  is  another  curiosity 
of  which  few  Americans  are  aware — a  catacomb  of  genuine 
mummies !  This  is  in  the  grim  Canon  de  Tsay-ee, — igno- 
rantly  called  "  du  Chelle," — which  is  lined  along  the  ledges  of 
its  dizzy  cliffs  with  the  prehistoric  houses  of  the  so-called 
Cliff-dwellers.  These  were  not  an  unknown  race  at  all,  but 
our  own  Pueblo  Indians  of  the  old  days  when  defense  against 
savage  neighbors  was  the  first  object  in  life. 

These  stone  houses,  clinging  far  up  the  gloomy  precipice, 
were  inaccessible  enough  at  best,  and  are  doubly  so  now  that 
their  ladders  have  crumbled  to  dust.  In  them  are  many 
strange  relics  of  prehistoric  times,  and  in  some  the  embalmed 
bodies  of  their  long-forgotten  occupants.  There  is  a  still 


WHERE  THEY  BEG   THE  BEAR'S  PARDON. 


65 


larger  "  deposit/'  so  to  speak,  of  American  mummies  in  the 
wildly  picturesque  San  Juan  country,  in  the  extreme  north- 
western corner  of  New  Mexico  and  adjacent  parts  of  Colorado 
and  Utah.  They  are  in  similar  cliff-built  ruins,  and  belong 
to  the  same  strange  race.  So  we  have  one  of  Egypt's  famous 
wonders  here  at  home. 

The  largest  Indian  tribes  of  the  Colorado  desert  have  from 
time  immemorial  cremated  their  dead  on  funeral  pyres,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  classic  ancients  and  of  modern  India.  All 
the  property  of  the  deceased  is  burned  in  the  same  flames,  and 
the  mourners  add  their  own  treasures  to  the  pile.  So  prop- 
erty does  not  accumulate  among  the  Mojaves,  and  there  is 
no  contesting  of  wills. 


PUEBLO   HUNTING   FETICHES. 


VI. 


THE  WITCHES'  CORNER. 

HIS  very  year  at  least  one  witch  has  been  offi- 
cially put  to  death  in  the  United  States,  after 
an  official  trial.  Last  year  many  witches  were 
executed,  and  many  the  year  before,  and  many 
the  year  before  that — and  so  on  back  for  centuries.  Is  n't 
that  a  strange  corner  of  our  own  country  of  which  you  did 
not  dream?  I  shall  never  forget  the  awe  which  filled  me 
when,  soon  after  coming  to  New  Mexico,  I  found  myself 
in  a  land  of  active  witchcraft.  Of  all  the  marvelous  things 
in  the  unwritten  southwest,  the  superstitions  of  the  na- 
tives impressed  me  most  deeply.  I  thought  to  have  settled 
in  New  Mexico,  U.  S.  A.  j  but  it  seemed  that  I  had  moved 
into  another  world  and  into  the  century  before  last.  To 
hear  my  neighbors  gravely  discussing  the  condition  of  so- 
and-so,  who  "  had  been  bewitched " ;  to  have  this  and  that 
person  pointed  out  to  me  with  the  warning  "  Cuidado  de  eUa 
—  es  Iruja!  "  *  to  learn  that  an  unfortunate  was  put  to  death 
yesterday  "for  being  a  witch" — it  often  made  me  pinch  my- 
self to  see  if  I  were  not  dreaming.  But  it  was  no  dream. 

*  "Look  out  for  her— she  is  a  witch ! " 


THE  WITCHES'  CORNER.  67 

The  belief  in  witchcraft  is  a  bitter  reality  in  the  wild  south- 
west. There  are  some  175,000  souls  in  New  Mexico,  of 
whom  four  fifths  can  neither  read  nor  write,  and  about  30,- 
000  of  whom  are  Indians,  25,000  Americans,  and  the  rest 
Mexicans.  Of  course  the  Americans  have  no  faith  in 
witches,  nor  do  the  educated  Mexicans  j  but  all  the  Indians 
and  probably  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  brave  but  ignorant 
Mexicans  are  firm  believers  in  this  astounding  superstition. 
There  are  very  few  towns  in  this  enormous  territory  most  of 
whose  people  do  not  believe  in  and  dread  one  or  more  re- 
puted witches  among  their  own  number ;  and  in  the  Pueblo 
towns  and  among  the  nomad  Navajos  and  other  Indians 
witches  are  so  numerous  as  to  be  the  greatest  of  all  dangers. 
In  my  own  pueblo  of  Isleta,  which  numbers  over  eleven  hun- 
dred souls,  nearly  half  the  people  are  believed  to  be  witches, 
and  the  only  thing  which  prevents  a  bloody  war  upon  them 
by  the  "  True  Believers  n  is  fear  of  the  Americans,  of  whom 
there  are  several  thousands  only  twelve  miles  away.  It  is 
only  a  little  while  since  a  well-known  young  Indian  of  this 
village  was  imprisoned  and  tortured  (by  the  stocks  and  neck- 
yoke)  on  formal  accusation  that  he  was  a  witch ;  and  still  less 
time  since  my  neighbor  two  doors  away  was  executed  at -mid- 
night, presumably  for  the  same  "  crime  " — since  he  was  killed 
in  the  specific  manner  prescribed  by  Tigua  customs  for  the 
slaying  of  witches.  To  keep  down  witchcraft  is  the  foremost 
official  duty  of  the  medicine-men ;  and  when  a  witch  is  con- 
victed, on  accusation  and  "  proof,"  it  is  the  office  of  one  of 
the  branches  of  medicine-men  (the  kum-pah-ivMt-lali-wm,  or 


68    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

guards)  to  execute  him  or  her  by  shooting  with  an  arrow 
through  the  whole  body  from  left  side  to  right  side.  Isleta 
is  now  one  of  the  most  civilized  of  the  pueblos ;  its  people 
are  the  kindest  parents  and  the  best  neighbors  I  know ;  and 
yet  the  supernatural  dread  of  supernatural  harm  turns  them 
at  times  as  far  from  their  real  selves  as  were  our  own  god- 
fearing forefathers  in  New  England  when  they  burned  poor 
old  women  alive.  Sandia — a  pueblo  of  the  same  tribe  as 
Isleta  (the  Tiguas,  or  Tee-wahn)  —  a  few  leagues  north  of 
here,  has  been  so  decimated  by  the  official  killing-off  of 
witches  that  it  bids  fair  soon  to  become  extinct ;  and  these 
executions  still  continue.  The  first  business  of  all  "medi- 
cine-makings"— which  are  not  to  compound  remedies  for 
sickness  alone,  though  that  is  "  cured  "  by  remarkable  means, 
but  to  avert  all  dangers  and  invoke  all  prosperities  for  the 
town,  its  people,  its  animals,  its  crops,  etc. — is  to  drive  away 
and  punish  all  witches  who  can  be  reached.  So  in  all  prayers, 
all  dances,  and  in  fact  in  all  ceremonies  whatever,  the  first  ser- 
vice is  to  disperse  the  evil  spirits  who  may  be  hovering  about. 
When  a  child  is  born  there  are  numerous  ceremonials  to  keep 
it  from  being  appropriated  by  the  witches.  When  a  person 
dies,  the  four  days  which  his  soul  will  take  to  reach  the  other 
world  are  filled  by  the  medicine-men  with  the  most  laborious 
and  astounding  incantations  and  charms,  with  smoke  to  blind 
the  eyes  of  the  witches,  and  with  false  trails  and  other  de- 
vices to  throw  them  off  the  track  of  the  journeying  soul,  lest 
they  overtake  it  and  swoop  it  away  to  the  accursed  land. 
It  needs  very  little  to  lay  an  Indian  open  to  the  suspicion 


THE   WITCHES'   CORNER.  69 

of  having  "  the  evil  road."  If  he  have  red  eyes,  as  though  he 
had  been  awake  o'  nights,  instead  of  sleeping  peacefully  as 
a  good  Indian  should,  he  is  at  once  looked  upon  with  distrust. 
If  he  have  an  enemy,  and  that  enemy  becomes  sick,  it  is  still 
more  convincing.  The  medicine-men  will  proceed  secretly  to 
search  the  house  of  the  suspected  person ;  and  if  they  find 
any  of  the  feathers  of  the  accursed  birds  (the  chief  of  which 
are  the  owl,  raven,  and  woodpecker)  or  any  other  implements 
of  witchcraft,  his  doom  is  sealed.  To  us  it  seems  murder ; 
but  it  is  as  judicial  as  our  civilized  punishments,  for  the  sen- 
tence is  pronounced  by  the  recognized  judges,  and  carried 
out  by  the  official  executioners.  There  are  numerous  charms 
against  witches — quite  as  valuable  as  our  own  horseshoe 
over  the  door — and  the  boundless  folk-lore  of  this  strange 
people  is  full  of  the  doings  of  "  those  of  the  evil  road,"  and  of 
the  retribution  with  which  they  are  always  visited  in  the  end. 

Witchcraft  is  a  common  faith  to  all  aborigines;  so  it  is 
somewhat  less  surprising  that  the  Pueblos  believe  in  it, 
though  they  are  so  different  from  other  Indians  in  so  many 
important  points.*  But  my  first  encounter  with  witches  and 
witch-believers  was  more  astounding,  for  the  people  were 
actual  citizens  and  voters  of  this  enlightened  republic  ! 

Among  the  uneducated  mass  of  Mexicans — who  are  the 
vast  majority  of  their  people  here — the  belief  in  hechiseria  or 
bntjeria  (witchcraft)  is  as  strong  as  among  the  Indians,  though 

*  The  Pueblos  are,  in  fact,  entitled  to  all  the  rights  of  American 
citizenship,  including  the  ballot,  under  the  solemn  pledges  our  govern- 
ment made  to  Mexico  in  the  treaty  of  Guadalupe  Hidalgo,  more  than 
half  a  century  ago ;  but  they  have  never  been  given  these  rights. 


70    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

their  witches  are  less  numerous.  It  is  a  remnant  of  the  far 
past.  We  have  still  the  official  records  of  many  trials  of 
witches  before  Spanish  courts  in  this  territory,  covering  a 
couple  of  centuries.  Sometimes  a  whole  bunch  of  witches 
were  tried  at  once,  with  all  the  solemnity  of  a  high  Spanish 
tribunal,  and  those  found  guilty  were  duly  put  to  death,  just 
as  if  they  had  been  murderers. 

Of  later  years  the  intelligence  of  the  educated  Mexicans 
has  rendered  such  trials  no  longer  possible,  and  no  Mexican 
would  think  now  of  bringing  a  witch  into  court  j  but  pro- 
ceedings outside  the  law  are  not  entirely  done  with.  In 
the  year  1887,  to  my  knowledge,  a  poor  old  Mexican  woman 
was  beaten  to  death  in  a  remote  town  by  two  men  who  be- 
lieved they  had  been  bewitched  by  her  ;  and  no  attempt  was 
ever  made  to  punish  her  slayers  !  A  few  months  later  I  had 
the  remarkable  privilege  of  photographing  three  "  witches " 
and  some  of  the  people  they  had  "  bewitched."  One  Mexi- 
can, of  whom  I  have  also  a  picture,  claims  that  he  was  per- 
manently crippled  by  these  three  poor  women,  and  his  right 
leg  is  sadly  twisted —though  most  of  us  would  see  in  it  more 
of  rheumatism  than  of  witchcraft.  But  you  never  could  make 
Patapalo  believe  that.  He  had  offended  the  women,  and 
afterward  thoughtlessly  drank  some  coffee  they  proffered  : 
and  his  leg  at  once  grew  crooked — what  could  be  plainer 
than  that  they  had  bewitched  him  ? 

A  much  more  intelligent  man  than  the  poor  town-butch- 
er, Patapalo,  tells — and  believes — a  much  more  astounding 
story.  He  incurred  the  displeasure  of  a  witch  in  San  Mateo, 


THE  WITCHES'  CORNER.  71 

and  is  ready  to  make  oath  that  she  turned  him  into  a  woman  ! 
He  had  to  pay  another  witch  in  the  distant  canon  Juan  de 
San  Taf  oya  to  turn  him  back  to  man  again  !  He  is  a  person 
of  whose  sincere  belief  in  this  ridiculous  statement  there  can 
be  no  doubt,  and  his  intelligence  in  other  matters  emphasizes 
the  depth  of  his  superstitious  ignorance  in  this.  I  know 
several  other  Mexicans  who  claim  to  have  been  bewitched  in 
the  same  way ;  and  the  stories  of  minor  misfortunes  at  the 
hands  of  the  witches  are  innumerable.  They  can  be  heard 
in  any  New  Mexican  hamlet. 

There  is  one  good  thing  about  Mexican  witches — they 
never  harm  the  dumb  animals.  Their  sorceries  are  used  only 
against  human  beings  who  have  aroused  their  enmity.  One 
who  enjoys  the  rather  dangerous  reputation  of  being  a  witch 
is  cordially  feared  and  hated,  but  finds  some  compensations. 
Few  Mexicans  are  reckless  enough  to  refuse  any  gift  or  favor 
the  supposed  witch  may  ask.  On  the  other  hand,  few  dare 
eat  anything  offered  by  a  witch,  for  in  case  they  have  un- 
wittingly offended  her  they  are  sure  the  food 'or  drink  will 
cause  a  live,  gnawing  animal  to  grow  within  them !  A  favor- 
ite revenge  of  the  witches  is  to  make  strange  sores  upon  the 
face  of  the  offender,  which  will  not  be  healed  until  the  witch 
is  appeased  by  presents  and  draws  out  a  stick  or  string  or 
rag — somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  the  Pueblo  wizards,  of 
whom  I  will  tell  you  presently.  Other  persons  are  made 
blind,  or  deaf,  or  lame.  Indeed,  almost  any  affliction  which 
may  befall  one  is  very  apt  to  be  charged  at  once  by  these 
superstition-ridden  people  to  some  witch  or  other. 


72    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

There  are  many  very  curious  details  in  the  Mexican  witch- 
faith.  No  witch,  for  instance,  can  pass  a  sign  of  the  cross ; 
and  a  couple  of  pins  or  sticks  placed  in  that  shape  effectually 
bars  witches  from  entering  the  room  or  from  emerging  if  the 
holy  emblem  is  between  them  and  the  door.  The  spoken 
name  of  God  or  the  Virgin  Mary  breaks  a  witch's  spell  at 
once.  It  is  soberly  related  by  many  people  of  my  acquaint- 
ance that  they  employed  witches  to  bear  them  pick-a-back 
to  great  distances;  but  becoming  alarmed  at  the  enormous 
height  to  which  the  witches  flew  with  them,  they  cried,  "  God 
save  me  !  "  or  something  of  the  sort,  and  instantly  fell  thou- 
sands of  feet  to  the  ground,  "but  were  not  badly  hurt ! 

Mexican  witches  do  not  fly  about  on  broomsticks,  like 
those  in  whom  our  forefathers  believed,  but  in  an  even  more 
remarkable  fashion.  By  day  they  are  plain,  commonplace 
people,  but  at  night  they  take  the  shapes  of  dogs,  cats,  rats, 
or  other  animals,  and  sally  forth  to  witch-meetings  in  the 
mountains,  or  to  prowl  about  the  houses  of  those  they  dislike. 
So  when  the  average  Mexican  sees  a  strange  cat  or  dog  about 
his  home  at  night  he  feels  a  horror  which  seems  out  of  place 
in  a  man  who  has  proved  his  courage  in  bloody  Indian  wars 
and  all  the  perils  of  the  frontier. 

When  witches  wish  to  fly,  they  generally  retain  their  hu- 
man form,  but  assume  the  legs  and  eyes  of  a  coyote  or  other 
animal,  leaving  their  own  at  home.  Then  saying  (in  Spanish, 
of  course),  "  Without  God  and  without  the  Virgin  Mary/'  they 
rise  into  the  air  and  sail  away.  A  sad  accident  once  befell  a 
male  witch  named  Juan  Perea,  whom  I  knew  in  San  Mateo, 


THE  WITCHES'  CORNER.  73 

but  who  died  a  couple  of  years  ago.  It  was  asserted  that 
one  night  he  went  flying  off  with  the  eyes  and  legs  of  a  cat, 
leaving  his  own  on  the  kitchen  table.  His  poor  starved 
shepherd-dog  overturned  the  table  and  ate  the  eyes,  and  Juan 
had  to  go  through  the  rest  of  his  life  wearing  the  green  eyes 
of  a  cat !  That  the  pigmies  of  Africa  should  believe  such 
things  would  not  be  strange  j  but  what  do  you  think  of  them 
as  articles  of  faith  for  American  voters  ? 

You  have  all  watched  the  "  shooting  stars "  with  wonder 
— but  with  no  such  feeling  as  that  with  which  the  natives 
here  see  them ;  for  here  those  fiery  hails  are  supposed  to  be 
witches,  flying  to  their  nightly  meetings ! 

Any  one  bearing  the  blessed  name  of  Juan  (John)  has  the 
sole  power  of  catching  witches.  All  he  has  to  do  is  to  draw 
a  nine-foot  circle  on  the  ground,  turn  his  shirt  inside  out,  and 
call  the  witch,  who  must  at  once  fall  helpless  into  this  circle ! 
As  there  are  innumerable  Juans  here,  they  doubtless  would 
have  exterminated  all  the  witches  long  ago,  except  for  the 
unpleasant  "  fact "  that  whenever  a  John  exercised  this  re- 
markable power  all  the  other  witches  in  the  country  fell  upon 
him  and  beat  him  to  death ! 

A  drunken  fellow  in  Cebolleta,  a  few  years  ago,  kicked  a 
witch.  In  revenge  she  caused  a  live  mouse  to  grow  in  his 
stomach.  The  little  rodent  made  its  landlord's  life  miser- 
able for  a  long  time  before  he  could  bribe  the  witch  to  coax 
it  out  through  his  mouth ! 

These  are  fair  samples  of  unnumbered  thousands  of  stories 
which  illustrate  the  firm  faith  of  my  neighbors  in  witchcraft. 
7 


74    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

It  seems  fairly  childish  to  speak  of  them  soberly,  and  yet  they 
are  implicitly  believed  by  more  citizens  of  the  United  States 
than  there  are  in  any  New  England  city  outside  of  Boston. 
In  this  strange  corner  of  our  country  witchcraft  is  a  concern 
of  daily  thought  and  dread,  as  it  was  in  the  older  world  a 
few  centuries  ago,  when  the  same  superstition  splashed  all 
Europe  with  the  blood  of  unfortunate  wretches.  I  have  had 
even  more  intimate  concern  with  witchcraft,  both  as  accused 
and  as  victim.  My  photographic  and  other  mysterious  work 
has  more  than  once  led  suspicious  Indians  to  view  me  as  a 
hechicero;  and  it  is  still  the  common  belief  among  my  abo- 
riginal friends  that  I  have  been  bewitched  by  some  even 
more  powerful  wizard. 

A  stroke  of  paralysis  in  1888  rendered  my  left  arm  power- 
less for  more  than  three  years  and  a  half.  The  cause  was 
simple  enough — the  breaking  of  a  tiny  blood-vessel  in  the 
brain.  But  my  Indian  friends — and  even  many  Mexicans— 
smiled  with  a  pitying  superiority  at  this  explanation.  They 
would  never  swallow  such  a  silly  story — they  knew  well 
enough  that  I  had  been  bewitched !  Some  even  suggested 
that  I  should  accuse  the  witch,  and  have  him  or  her  properly 
dealt  with  !  My  final  complete  recovery — thanks  to  a  power- 
ful constitution  and  an  out-door  life — only  confirmed  their 
belief.  Now  they  knew  I  had  paid  some  other  witch  to  cure 
me! 


VII. 


THE   MAGICIANS. 


O 


civilized  "magicians/' 
like  Herrmann  and  his 
predecessors,  earn  their  liveli- 
hood by  exhibiting  their  mar- 
velous dexterity,  but  with- 
out any  claim  to  superhuman 
powers.  They  avowedly  rely 
only  upon  their  hands,  edu- 
cated to  surpassing  cleverness 
by  tedious  years  of  practice, 
and  upon  various  ingenious  machines  and  accessories.  Per- 
haps this  frankness,  however,  is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that 
any  supernatural  pretense  would  be  laughed  at  by  their  in- 
telligent auditors ;  and  if  we  were  all  prepared  to  accept 
them  as  real  magicians,  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  they  would 
not  willingly  pose  as  such. 

With  the  aboriginal  wizard  there  is  no  such  stimulus  to 
frankness.  If  his  audiences  have  eyes  incomparably  less 
easy  to  be  befooled  than  ours,  their  intellectual  vision  is  less 
acute.  To  outdo  even  those  matchlessly  observant  eyes,  he 


76    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

has  only  to  be  matchlessly  adroit;  and  when  the  eyes  are 
once  over-matched,  his  auditors  are  ready  to  accept  any  ex- 
planation he  may  choose  to  give.  He  therefore  claims  super- 
natural powers,  given  to  him  by  Those  Above;  and  my 
studies  convince  me  that  he  himself  believes  this  as  fully  as 
do  any  of  his  people — so  easy  is  it  for  us  all,  in  time,  to  im- 
pose upon  ourselves  even  more  than  upon  others. 

Superstition  is  the  corner-stone  of  all  the  strange  aborigi- 
nal religions.  Everything  which  the  Indian  does  not  abso- 
lutely understand  he  attributes  to  a  supernatural  cause  — 
and  to  a  personified  one.  The  rainbow  is  a  bow  of  the  gods  • 
the  lightning,  their  arrows;  the  thunder,  their  drum;  the 
sun,  their  shield.  The  very  animals  are  invested  with  super- 
natural attributes,  according  to  their  power  to  injure  man  or 
to  do  him  good.  In  such  a  system  as  this  a  man  who  can 
do  or  appear  to  do  what  others  cannot  is  naturally  regarded 
as  having  superhuman  gifts  —  in  short,  he  is  a  wizard.  The 
chief  influence  and  authority  with  all  aboriginal  tribes  lie  in 
their  medicine-men,  and  these  are  always  magicians.  They 
have  gained  their  ascendancy  by  their  power  to  do  wonder- 
ful and  inexplicable  things;  and  this  ascendancy  is  main- 
tained in  the  hands  of  a  small,  secret  class,  which  never  dies 
out,  since  it  is  constantly  recruited  by  the  adoption  of  boys 
into  the  order,  to  which  their  lives  are  thenceforth  absolutely 
devoted.  The  life  of  a  medicine-man  is  a  fearfully  hard  one. 
The  manual  practice  alone  which  is  necessary  to  acquire  that 
marvelous  legerdemain  is  almost  the  task  of  a  lifetime ;  and 
there  are  countless  enormous  fasts  and  other  self-denials, 


THE  MAGICIANS.  77 

which  are  so  rigorous  that  these  magicians  seldom  attain  to 
the  great  age  which  is  common  among  their  people.  With 
the  Indian  magicians  as  with  ours7  conjuring  is  the  means  of 
livelihood,  but  in  a  different  and  indirect  way.  They  neither 
charge  an  admittance-fee  nor  take  up  a  collection,  but  receive 
less  direct  returns  from  the  faith  of  their  fellow-aborigines 
that  they  are  "  precious  to  The  Trues/7  and  that  their  favor 
should  be  cultivated  by  presents.  The  jugglers  of  India,  of 
whom  we  read  so  much,  will  exhibit  their  marvelous  tricks  to 
any  one  for  a  consideration ;  but  no  money  in  the  world 
would  tempt  one  of  our  Indian  jugglers  to  admit  a  stranger 
to  the  place  where  he  was  performing  his  wonders.  To  him, 
as  to  his  people,  it  is  a  matter  not  of  money  but  of  religion. 

The  aboriginal  magicians  with  whom  I  am  best  acquainted 
are  the  medicine-men  of  the  Navajo  and  Pueblo  Indians  of 
New  Mexico,  and  astounding  performers  they  are.  It  is 
impossible  to  say  which  are  the  more  dextrous,  though  the 
Navajos  have  one  trick  which  I  have  never  seen  equaled  by 
the  world's  most  famous  prestidigitators.  If  these  stern 
bronze  conjurers  had  the  civilized  notion  of  making  money 
by  exhibiting  themselves,  they  could  amass  fortunes.  They 
have  none  of  the  cabinets,  mirrors,  false-bottomed  cases,  or 
other  appliances  of  our  stage- wizards  j  and  they  lack  the 
greatest  aid  of  the  latter — the  convenient  sleeves  and  pock- 
ets. Their  tricks  are  done  in  a  bare  room,  with  a  hard  clay 
floor  under  which  are  no  springs  or  wires,  with  no  accesso- 
ries whatever. 

The  principal  occasions  of  Pueblo  and  Navajo  magic  are 


78    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

at  the  medicine-makings,  when  the  people  gather  to  see  the 
shamans  (medicine-men)  heal  sickness,  foretell  the  year,  or 
give  thanks  to  The  Times  for  its  prosperity,  and  perform 
other  rites  belonging  to  such  ceremonials.  These  medicine- 
makings  among  the  Pueblos  are  held  in  one  of  the  medicine- 
houses — a  great  room  sacred  to  the  shamans  and  never  to 
be  profaned  by  any  other  use.  There  is  one  just  behind  the 
Indian  house  in  which  I  live.  The  Navajos  hold  them  in  the 
mQdicmQ-hoganda — a  large  conical  hut,  equally  devoted  to 
this  sole  purpose. 

After  the  preliminary  prayers  to  Those  Above,  the  disper- 
sion of  evil  spirits,  and  other  extremely  curious  and  inter- 
esting ceremonies  which  I  have  no  space  to  describe  here, 
the  business  of  the  medicine-dance  is  to  cure  those  who  are 
sick  or  afflicted — that  is,  according  to  the  Indian  idea,  be- 
witched. There  is  no  giving  of  remedies,  as  we  understand 
the  phrase  —  all  is  magic.  The  " medicine"  (walir,  in  the 
language  of  this  pueblo)  is  rather  mental  and  moral  than 
physical;  and  the  doses  are  from  nimble  fingers  and  not 
from  vials.  An  American  "medicine-man"  would  open  his 
eyes  very  wide  if  he  could  see  how  these  swarthy  doctors  put 
up  a  prescription. 

The  shamans  dance  during  the  whole  of  their  professional 
duties,  and  most  of  the  time  have  in  each  hand  a  long 
feather  from  the  wing  of  an  eagle.  Earlier  in  the  perform- 
ance these  feathers  have  been  used  to  toss  up  evil  spirits  so 
that  the  wind  may  bear  them  away ;  but  now  they  serve  as 
lancets,  probes,  and  in  fact  the  whole  surgical-case  and  medi- 


THE  MAGICIANS.  79 

cine-chest.  A  shaman  dances  up  to  a  sick  person  in  the  au- 
dience, puts  the  tip  of  the  feather  against  the  patient,  and 
with  the  quill  in  his  mouth  sucks  diligently  for  a  moment. 
The  feather  seems  to  swell  to  a  great  size,  as  though  some 
large  object  were  passing  through  it.  Then  it  resumes  its 
natural  size,  the  shaman  begins  to  cough  and  choke,  and 
directly  with  his  hand  draws  from  his  mouth  a  large  rag,  or 
a  big  stone,  or  a  foot-long  branch  of  the  myriad-bristling 
buckhorn-cactus — while  the  patient  feels  vastly  relieved  at 
having  such  an  unpleasant  lodger  removed  from  his  cheek  or 
neck  or  eye  !  No  wonder  he  had  felt  sick  !  Sometimes  the 
magician  does  not  use  the  feather  at  all,  but  with  his  bare 
hand  plucks  from  the  body  of  the  sick  man  the  remarkable 
"  disease,"  which  is  waved  aloft  in  triumph  and  then  passed 
around  to  the  audience  for  critical  inspection.  In  the  whole 
performance,  it  must  be  remembered,  the  wizards  have  not 
even  the  advantage  of  distance,  but  are  close  enough  to  touch 
the  audience. 

Common  to  these  same  medicine-dances  is  the  startling 
illusion  of  the  witch-killing.  In  the  bowl  of  sacred  water 
which  stands  before  him,  the  chief  shaman  is  supposed  to  see 
as  in  a  mirror  everything  that  is  happening  in  the  whole 
world,  and  even  far  into  the  future.  At  times,  as  he  bends 
to  blow  a  delicate  wreath  of  smoke  from  the  sacred  cigarette 
across  the  magic  mirror,  he  cries  out  that  he  sees  witches  in 
a  certain  spot  doing  ill  to  some  Indian.  The  Cuni-pah-huit- 
lah-wen  (medicine-guards)  rush  out  of  the  room  with  their 
bows  and  arrows — which  are  the  insignia  of  their  office, 


80    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

without  which  they  must  never  appear — to  get  the  witches. 
In  a  short  time  they  return,  bringing  their  victims  by  the 
long  hair.  These  "  dead  witches n  are  in  face,  dress,  and 
everything  else  exactly  like  Indians,  except  that  they  are  no 
larger  than  a  three-year-old  child.  Each  has  the  feathers  of 
an  arrow  projecting  under  the  left  arm,  while  the  agate  or 
volcanic  glass  tip  shows  under  the  right.  Of  course  they  are 
manikins  of  some  sort;  but  the  deception  is  sickeningly 
perfect.  The  guards  swing  them  up  to  the  very  faces  of  the 
audience  to  be  looked  at;  and  sometimes  drops  of  apparent 
blood  spatter  upon  the  awed  spectators. 

Another  remarkable  feat  of  these  jugglers  is  to  build  upon 
the  bare  floor  a  hot  fire  of  cedar- wood,  so  close  as  almost  to 
roast  the  foremost  of  the  audience.  Then  the  dusky  magi- 
cians, still  keeping  up  their  weird  chant — which  must  never 
be  stopped  during  the  services — dance  bare-footed  and  bare- 
legged in  and  upon  the  fire,  hold  their  naked  arms  in  the 
flames,  and  eat  living  coals  with  smacking  lips  and  the  utmost 
seeming  gusto.  There  can  be  no  optical  illusion  about  this 
— it  is  as  plain  as  daylight.  Of  course  there  must  have  been 
some  preparation  for  the  fiery  ordeal,  but  what  it  is  no  one 
knows  save  the  initiated,  and  it  is  certainly  made  many  hours 
beforehand,  for  the  performers  have  been  in  plain  sight  for  a 
very  long  time. 

Another  equally  startling  trick  is  performed  when  the 
room  has  been  darkened  by  extinguishing  the  countless 
candles  which  gave  abundant  light  on  the  other  ceremonies. 
The  awed  audience  sit  awhile  in  the  gloom  in  hushed  ex- 


THE   MAGICIANS.  83 

pectancy.  Then  they  hear  the  low  growl  of  distant  thunder, 
which  keeps  rolling  nearer  and  nearer.  Suddenly  a  blinding 
flash  of  forked  lightning  shoots  across  the  room  from  side  to 
side,  and  another  and  another,  while  the  room  trembles  to 
the  roar  of  the  thunder,  and  the  flashes  show  terrified  women 
clinging  to  their  husbands  and  brothers.  Outside  the  sky 
may  be  twinkling  with  a  million  stars,  but  in  that  dark  room 
a  fearful  storm  seems  to  be  raging.  If  one  of  these  abo- 
riginal Jupiters  would  condescend  to  superintend  the  light- 
nings for  our  theaters,  we  should  have  much  more  realistic 
stage-storms  than  we  do.  These  artificial  storms  last  but  a 
few  moments,  and  when  they  are  over  the  room  is  lighted 
up  again  for  the  other  ceremonies.  How  these  effects  are 
produced  I  am  utterly  unable  to  explain,  but  they  are  start- 
lingly  real. 

The  characteristic  feature  of  one  of  the  medicine-dances  of 
the  Beer-ahn  here  in  Isleta  is  the  swallowing  of  eighteen-inch 
swords  to  the  very  hilt,  by  the  naked  (except  for  the  tiny 
breech-clout)  performers.  These  swords  are  double-edged, 
sharp-pointed,  and,  as  nearly  as  I  can  tell,  about  two  inches 
wide.  So  far  as  I  know,  no  other  of  the  numerous  classes  of 
medicine-men  here  perform  this  feat. 

In  the  great  Navajo  medicine-dance  of  Dsil-yid-je  Quacal, 
one  of  the  most  important  ceremonies  of  the  nine-days' 
"  dance  »  is  the  swallowing  of  the  "  great  plumed  arrows  "  by 
the  almost  naked  conjurers  in  similar  fashion.  After  they 
have  been  withdrawn  from  the  mouths  of  the  magicians,  the 
magical  arrows  (which  have  the  ancient  stone  heads)  are  ap- 


84    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

plied  to  the  patient,  being  pressed  to  the  soles  of  his  feet,  to 
his  knees,  hands;  stomach,  back,  shoulders,  crown  of  head, 
and  mouth. 

In  this  same  remarkable  and  almost  endless  Navajo  cere- 
monial, some  of  the  magicians  (generally  in  a  band  of  ten  or 
a  dozen)  perform  the  startling  fire-dance.  The  conjurers  are 
clad  only  in  the  breech-clout,  and  each  carries  in  his  hands  a 
long  bundle  of  shredded  cedar-bark.  The  dance  is  performed 
around  an  enormous  fire  in  a  corral  known  as  the  Dark- 
Circle-of -Branches.  Each  lights  his  bark  flambeau,  and  then 
they  run  at  top  speed  around  and  around  the  bonfire.  They 
hold  their  torches  against  their  own  nude  bodies,  then 
against  those  of  their  companions,  often  for  two  or  three 
minutes  at  a  time  j  they  whip  each  other  with  these  burning 
scourges,  and  rub  each  other  down  with  them,  taking  and 
giving  veritable  baths  of  fire  as  they  run  madly  around  the 
circle,  the  flames  streaming  behind  them  in  fiery  banners. 
Dr.  Washington  Matthews,  the  foremost  student  of  Navajo 
customs,  has  said  officially : '  "  I  have  seen  many  fire  scenes 
on  the  stage,  many  acts  of  fire-eating  and  fire-handling  by 
civilized  jugglers,  but  nothing  quite  comparable  to  this.77 

Another  Navajo  jugglery  is  to  stand  a  feather  on  end  in 
a  flaring,  pan-shaped  basket,  and  dance  with  it  as  a  partner. 
The  Indian — in  this  case  sometimes  the  dancer  is  a  very 
young  boy — dances  in  proper  fashion  around  the  basket; 
and  the  feather  dances  too,  hopping  gently  up  and  down,  and 
swaying  in  the  direction  of  its  human  partner.  If  he  dances 
to  the  north,  the  feather  leans  northward ;  if  he  moves  to  the 


THE  MAGICIANS.  85 

south,  the  feather  tips  southward,  and  so  on,  as  if  the  quill 
were  actually  reaching  out  to  him ! 

There  is  also  "  magic  "  in  the  foretelling  of  the  year,  which 
is  done  by  the  chief  shaman  and  his  two  first-assistants. 
This  medicine-dance  is  always  by  or  before  the  middle  of 
March,  many  weeks  before  a  green  blade  of  any  sort  is  to  be 
found  in  this  climate.  These  three  officials  go  out  from  the 
meeting  to  the  banks  of  the  Rio  Grande,  and  presently  return 
with  stalks  of  green  corn  and  wheat — which  they  declare 
was  brought  to  them  by  the  river  direct  from  The  Trues. 
These  stalks  are  handed  about  among  the  audience,  and  then 
the  chief  shaman  draws  from  them  the  omens  for  the  crops 
of  the  coming  season. 

The  last  service  of  the  medicine-dance  before  the  benedic- 
tion-song is  the  "  seed-giving/7  which  is  itself  a  sleight-of-hand 
trick.  The  chief  fetich  of  the  shamans  is  "the  Mother" — 
an  ear  of  spotless  white  corn  with  a  plume  of  downy  white 
feathers  bound  to  the  head.  It  represents  the  mother  of  all 
mankind,  and  during  the  whole  medicine-dance  one  of  these 
queer  objects  has  been  sitting  in  front  of  each  medicine-man. 
Now,  as  all  in  the  audience  rise,  the  chief  shaman  and  his  as- 
sistants shake  their  "  Mothers  "  above  the  heads  of  the  throng 
in  token  of  blessing  j  and  out  pours  a  perfect  shower  of  ker- 
nels of  corn,  wheat,  and  seeds  of  all  kinds,  in  a  vastly  greater 
quantity  than  I  would  undertake  to  hide  in  ten  times  as 
many  of  those  little  tufts. 

The  most  remarkable  of  the  feats  of  the  Pueblo  magicians 
is  one  of  which  I  cannot  write  in  detail,  for  I  have  never 
8 


86     SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

seen  it  j  but  that  the  trick  is  perf  ormed,  and  so  well  done  as  to 
deceive  the  sharpest-eyed  of  the  spectators,  is  a  fact  beyond 
doubt.  The  shamans  are  said  at  some  special  occasions  to 
turn  themselves  at  will  into  any  animal  shape  -}  and  where  a 
moment  before  had  stood  a  painted  Indian  the  audience  sees 
a  wolf,  or  bear,  or  dog,  or  some  other  brute !  This  is  in  a 
line  with  some  of  the  most  famous  juggleries  of  India,  and 
is  quite  as  wonderful  a  deception  as  any  of  them. 

These  are  by  no  means  the  only  tricks  in  the  repertory  of 
the  Pueblo  conjurers,  but  they  are  sufficient  to  illustrate  the 
marvelous  dexterity  and  adroitness  of  these  swarthy  won- 
der-workers, who  produce  such  surprising  results  with  none 
of  the  paraphernalia  of  more  civilized  jugglers,  and  whose 
magic  has  such  a  deep  interest  beyond  its  mere  bewilderment 
of  the  eye.  It  is  one  of  the  potent  factors  in  a  religion  so 
astonishing  and  so  vastly  complicated  that  whole  volumes 
would  hardly  exhaust  the  interest  of  the  subject. 

The  Navajo  magicians  practise  all  these  tricks  and  numer- 
ous others.  One  of  their  manifestations  which  I  have  never 
found  among  the  Pueblos  is  the  "  moving  of  the  sun."  This 
takes  place  in  the  medicine-lodge  at  night — the  time  of  all 
official  acts  of  the  medicine-men.  At  the  appointed  time  a 
sun  rises  on  the  east  (inside  the  room)  and  slowly  describes 
an  arched  course  until  at  last  it  sets  in  the  west  side  of  the 
room,  and  darkness  reigns  again.  During  the  whole  per- 
formance a  sacred  chant  is  kept  up,  and  once  started  dare  not 
be  interrupted  until  the  sun  has  finished  its  course. 

But  the  crowning  achievement  of  the  Navajo — and,  in  my 


THE  MAGICIANS.  89 

knowledge,  of  any  Indian — magicians  is  the  growing  of  the 
sacred  corn.  At  sunrise  the  shaman  plants  the  enchanted 
kernel  before  him,  in  full  view  of  his  audience,  and  sits  sol- 
emnly in  his  place  singing  a  weird  song.  Presently  the  earth 
cracks,  and  the  tender  green  shoot  pushes  forth.  As  the 
magician  sings  on  the  young  plant  grows  visibly,  reaching 
upward  several  inches  an  hour,  waxing  thick  and  putting  out 
its  drooping  blades.  If  the  juggler  stops  his  song  the  growth 
of  the  corn  stops,  and  is  resumed  only  when  he  recommences 
his  chant.  By  noon  the  corn  is  tall  and  vigorous  and  already 
tasseled-out ;  and  by  sunset  it  is  a  mature  and  perfect  plant, 
with  its  tall  stalk,  sedgy  leaves,  and  silk-topped  ears  of  corn ! 
How  the  trick  is  performed  I  have  never  been  able  to  form 
so  much  as  a  satisfactory  guess  ;  but  done  it  is,  as  plainly  as 
eyes  ever  saw  anything  done,  and  apparently  with  as  little 
chance  for  deception. 


vm. 

THE   SELF-CRUCIFIERS. 

ROM  the  witches,  and  within  the  same  strange 
corner  of  our  country  where  they  still  flourish, 
it  is  an  easy  step  to  a  much  more  wonderful 
fanaticism;  to  the  most  wonderful,  perhaps,  in 
the  limits  of  the  civilized  world.  It  is  a  relic 
of  a  barbarism  so  incredible  that  one  can  hardly  blame  those 
who  could  not  believe  it  possible.  I  should  have  been  as 
skeptical  myself,  though  thousands  of  Americans  have  seen 
it,  if  I  had  not  myself  viewed  the  astounding  sight.  And 
in  corroboration  of  my  eyes  there  are  beside  me  a  score  of 
photographs,  which  very  nearly  cost  me  my  life  in  the 
taking,  and  several  times  since. 

You  may  have  learned  that  in  the  Middle  Ages  nearly  the 
whole  of  Europe  had  a  strange  epidemic — a  fever  of  peni- 
tential self-whipping.  The  Flagellants,  as  they  were  called, 
paraded  the  streets  lashing  themselves  with  scourges,  or  used 
the  whip  at  home.  Even  kings  caught  the  infection,  and 
abused  their  own  royal  backs.  It  took  centuries  to  eradi- 
cate this  remarkable  custom.  There  is  nothing  left  of  it  in 
Europe  now  •  and  one  who  wishes  to  see  so  strange  a  sight 


THE   SELF-CRUCIFIERS.  91 

must  go  not  abroad  but  to  a  neglected  corner  of  our  own 
land. 

When  I  read  in  boyhood  of  the  awful  self-tortures  of  the 
Fakeers  of  India,  I  little  dreamed  that  I  should  come  to  live 
among  a  class  of  men  who  fully  parallel  their  worst  self- 
cruelties,  and  men  who  are  citizens  of  the  United  States,  with 
votes  as  good  as  mine. 

The  Penitentes  or  Penitent  Brothers  were  once  very  nu- 
merous in  New  Mexico,  but  have  been  quietly  stamped  out 
by  the  Church  until  but  few  active  bands  remain,  and  they 
only  in  the  most  out-of-the-way  hamlets.  They  are  Mexicans, 
and  of  course  very  ignorant  and  fanatic  ones.  Their  strange 
brotherhood — a  remnant  and  perversion  of  the  penitent 
orders  of  the  Middle  Ages — is  active  only  forty  days  in  the 
year,  the  forty  days  of  Lent.  At  that  time  they  flog  their 
own  naked  backs  with  cruel  scourges  of  aloe-fiber,  carry 
enormous  crosses,  lie  on  beds  of  cactus,  and  perform  simi- 
lar self-tortures,  making  pilgrimages  thus.  On  Good  Friday 
they  redouble  their  ghastly  efforts,  and  finally  crucify,  upon 
a  real  cross,  one  of  their  number  who  is  chosen  by  lot.  He 
does  not  always  die  under  this  awful  torture,  but  when  he 
does,  nothing  is  done  to  his  fanatical  brethren. 

I  shall  never  forget  my  first  encounter  with  the  Peni- 
tentes at  San  Mateo,  N.  M.,  in  1888,  and  there  are  very  good 
reasons  why  I  should  not.  Among  them  is  a  ball  in  my 
throat.  If  the  discovery  that  I  was  living  among  witches 
had  startled  and  aroused  me,  you  may  imagine  my  feelings 
when,  some  months  later,  I  learned  that  a  living  man  was  to 


92    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

be  crucified  in  town  in  a  few  days.  This  was  learning  some- 
thing about  my  own  country  with  a  vengeance.  The  first 
hint  came  one  belated  night  as  I  returned  from  hunting  in 
the  mountains.  Suddenly  there  rose  upon  the  air  the  most 
awful  sound  I  ever  heard.  The  hideous  scream  of  the  moun- 
tain-lion, the  deadly  war-whoop,  are  tame  beside  it.  You  may 
laugh  at  me  for  being  scared  at  the  simple  whistle  of  a  reed, 
but  if  ever  you  hear  that  unearthly  ululation  you  will  shiver 
too.  Words  cannot  describe  its  piercing,  wild,  uncanny  shrill. 
The  official  pitero  afterward  taught  me  that  simple  air,  and 
it  sounds  very  flat  indeed  when  whistled  j  but  blown  from 
his  shrieking  reed,  filling  the  air  for  miles  so  that  one  cannot 
tell  whether  it  comes  from  above,  below,  or  either  hand,  it  is 
as  ill  a  sound  as  you  will  ever  wish  to  hear. 

When  I  got  home  to  my  courtly  Spanish  friends  and  asked 
the  meaning  of  that  unearthly  too-ootle-tee-oo  they  told  me 
about  the  Penitentes.  It  was  Monday  of  Holy  Week,  and 
they  were  making  their  nightly  pilgrimages  j  on  Thursday 
and  Friday  I  could  see  them.  What,  in  daylight  ?  Oh,  yes. 
Hurrah !  Then  I  will  photograph  them !  Por  dios  amigo,  but 
they  will  kill  you  if  you  think  of  such  a  foolhardy  thing ! 
But  who  ever  knew  an  enthusiast  to  be  a  coward  in  the  line 
of  his  hobby  ?  If  I  had  been  certain  of  being  killed  the  next 
moment,  it  is  not  sure  that  I  should  not  have  tried  to  get 
the  photographs  first,  so  wrought  up  was  I.  And  make  the 
photographs  I  did,  twenty-five  of  them,  with  my  one  useful 
hand  quaking  on  the  bulb  of  the  Prosch  shutter  and  now  and 
then  snapping  an  instantaneous  picture  at  the  marvelous  sight, 


THE   SELF-CRUCIFIEKS.  93 

with  a  cocked  six-shooter  lying  on  the  top  of  the  camera-box, 
and  lion-like  Don  Ireneo  and  a  stalwart  peon  with  revolvers 
in  hand  facing  back  the  murderous  mob.  Perhaps  the  pic- 
tures were  not  worth  the  risk  of  that  day  and  of  the  many 
subsequent  months  when  repeated  attempts  were  made  to  as- 
sassinate me ;  but  they  are  the  only  photographs  that  were 
ever  made  of  that  strangest  of  the  strange  corners  of  our 
country,  and  I  have  never  grudged  the  price.  I  afterward 
got  photographs  of  several  of  the  chief  Penitentesj  and 
have  in  my  cabinet  some  of  their  blood-stained  scourges, 
procured  at  equal  risk. 

That  was  in  1888.  The  same  year  there  were,  to  my  know- 
ledge, crucifixions  in  two  other  New  Mexican  towns,  and 
whipping  and  the  other  rites  in  twenty-three.  In  1889,  1890, 
and  1891  there  were  again  crucifixions  in  San  Mateo  and 
one  other  town  that  I  know  of,  and  there  may  have  been 
more.  Until  within  four  years  there  were  also  women-Peni- 
tentes,  but  so  far  as  I  can  learn  they  are  no  longer  active. 
They  used  to  wind  all  their  limbs  with  wire  or  ropes  so 
tightly  as  to  stop  the  circulation,  bear  crosses,  and  march  for 
miles  with  unstockinged  feet  in  shoes  half  filled  with  sharp 
pebbles. 

And  these  are  your  fellow-citizens  and  mine !  "What  do 
you  think  about  going  to  Africa  to  find  barbarous  customs, 
or  to  Oberammergau  for  a  Passion-play  ? 


IX. 

HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS. 

N  Indian  who  dwells  in  a  house  at  all  seems  an 
anomaly  to  most  of  us,  who  know  none  too 
much  of  our  own  country.  We  picture  him 
•always  as  a  nomad,  living  in  his  wigwam  or 
tepee  of  bark  or  hide  for  a  few  days  at  a  time, 
and  then  moving  his  "town"  elsewhere.  The  astounded 
look  of  the  average  traveler  when  he  learns  that  we  have 
Indians  who  build  and  inhabit  permanent  and  good  dwell- 
ings of  many  stories  in  height  is  never  to  be  forgotten. 

There  are  some  tribes  of  recently  civilized  aborigines  in 
the  Indian  Territory  who  have  learned  to  dwell  in  fairly  good 
farm-houses  within  a  generation,  and  other  remnants  of  tribes 
elsewhere ;  but  these  all  learned  the  habit  from  us,  and  re- 
cently. There  is  but  one  Indian  tribe  in  North  America  above 
Mexico  which  has  always  lived  in  permanent  houses  since 
history  began,  and  that  is  one  of  our  very  largest  tribes,  the 
Pueblos.  When  Columbus  was  yet  trying  to  beat  a  New 
World  into  the  thick  skull  of  the  Old,  these  simple,  unlettered 
"  village  Indians "  were  already  living  in  their  strange  but 
comfortable  and  lofty  tenements,  and  no  man  knows  for  how 


X 

HOMES   THAT   WERE   FORTS.  V.         95 

long  before.  And  in  very  similar  houses  they  dwell  to-day, 
and  in  very  much  the  same  style  as  before  the  first  European 
eyes  ever  saw  America.  It  took  a  great  many  generations  for 
onr  forefathers  to  attain  to  any  buildings  of  more  than  fifty 
rooms  and  three  stories  in  this  New  World;  but  unknown 
centuries  before  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims —  or  even  of  the 
Spaniards,  who  were  more  than  a  hundred  years  ahead  of  them 
— the  ignorant  Indians  of  the  southwest  built  and  occupied 
huge  houses  from  four  to  six  stories  in  height,  and  with  some- 
times half  a  thousand  rooms.*  The  influence  of  civilization 
has  largely  affected  Pueblo  architecture  5  and  most  of  the 
Indian  towns  along  the  Rio  Grande  nowadays  have  but  one- 
and  two-storied  structures, more  after  the  Spanish  style.  But 
there  are  hundreds  of  ruins  of  these  enormous  "  community- 
houses75  scattered  over  the  two  territories  of  Arizona  and 
New  Mexico,  and  some  in  Colorado  and  Utah,  and  some  still 
occupied  towns  of  the  same  sort  The  most  striking  example 
among  living  towns  is  the  pueblo  of  Taos,f  in  th^  extreme 
northern  part  of  New  Mexico.  That  wonderfully  picturesque 
town,  looking  at  which  the  traveler  finds  it  hard  to  realize 
that  he  is  still  in  America,  has  but  two  houses ;  but  they  are 
five  and  six  stories  high,  and  contain  about  three  hundred 
rooms  apiece.  The  pueblo  of  Acoma,  in  a  western  county, 
has  six  houses,  each  three  stories  tall ,  and  Zuni,  still  farther 

*  Pecos  had  two  houses  of  five  hundred  and  seventeen  and  five  hun- 
dred and  eighty-five  rooms  respectively. 

t  Reached  by  a  twenty-five-mile-wagon-ride  from  Embudo,  on  the 
Denver  and  Rio  Grande  Railway. 


HOMES  THAT   WERE  FORTS.  97 

west,  has  a  six-story  community-house  covering  many  acres 
and  containing  many  hundred  rooms.  The  Moqui  towns  are 
three-storied.  As  for  ruins  of  such  buildings,  they  are  every- 
where. Some  years  ago  I  found  in  a  remote  and  dangerous 
corner  of  the  Navajo  country  such  a  ruin — the  type  of  a 
thousand  others — in  which  the  five-story  community-house 
formed  an  entire  rectangle,  inclosing  a  public  square  in  the 
middle.  The  outer  walls  of  these  houses  never  had  doors  or 
windows,  so  they  presented  to  any  marauding  foe  a  blank 
wall  of  great  height.  On  one  side  of  this  ruin  is  its  most 
uncommon  feature — a  great  tower,  with  part  of  the  fifth  story 
still  standing,  and  still  showing  the  loopholes  by  which  the 
beleaguered  Pueblos  showered  agate-tipped  arrows  upon  their 
besiegers.  This  pueblo  was  a  deserted  and  forgotten  ruin 
when  the  first  Spaniards  entered  this  territory,  three  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago. 

All  these  great  houses  were  of  stone  masonry  very  well 
laid.  The  builders  had  no  metal  of  any  sort,  and  therefore 
could  not  dress  stone,  as  many  superficial  observers  have 
supposed  they  did,  but  selected  sandstones  and  limestones 
which  broke  naturally  into  rather  regular  shape,  and  laid 
these  in  mud  mortar  with  remarkable  skill.  Down  the  un- 
crumbled  masonry  of  those  prehistoric  walls  one  can  slide 
the  point  of  a  spade  as  down  a  dressed  plank. 

The  architecture  of  the  Pueblos  is  unique  and  character- 
istic, and  their  original  houses  look  unlike  anything  else  in 
the  world.  They  are  all  terraced,  so  that  the  front  of  a 
building  looks  like  a  gigantic  flight  of  steps.  The  second 
9 


98    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

story  stands  well  back  on  the  roof  of  the  first,  which  thus 
gives  it  a  sort  of  broad,  uncovered  porch  its  whole  length. 
The  third  story  is  similarly  placed  upon  the  second,  and  so 
on  up.  There  are  no  stairs  inside  even  the  largest  of  these 
buildings,  except  sometimes  ladders  to  go  down  into  the  first 
story  when  that  is  built  in  the  old  fashion  without  doors. 
In  Acoma,  which  has  about  seven  hundred  people,  there 
were,  when  I  first  knew  it,  but  six  doors  on  the  ground,  and 
there  are  but  few  more  now.  To  get  into  the  first  story  of 
any  of  the  hundreds  of  other  tenements,  one  must  go  up  a 
ladder  to  the  first  roof,  enter  the  second-story  room,  lift  a 
wee  trap-door  in  its  floor,  and  back  down  another  ladder  to 
the  first-floor  room.  All  the  "  stairs  "  are  outside  the  house, 
and  can  be  moved  from  place  to  place — a  plan  which  has 
its  advantages  as  well  as  its  drawbacks — for  they  are  all 
simply  tall,  clumsy  ladders. 

All  these  architectural  peculiarities  were  for  purposes  of 
defense.  The  lower  story  was  a  dead  wall,  into  which  no 
enemy  with  only  aboriginal  weapons  could  break,  and  some 
of  these  walls  have  laughed  at  civilized  field-pieces.  The  lad- 
ders could  easily  be  drawn  up,  and  the  level  roofs  made  an 
excellent  position  from  which  to  rain  stones  and  arrows  upon 
a  foe.  Even  if  the  enemy  captured  the  first  roof,  the  people 
had  only  to  retire  to  the  second,  from  which  they  could  fight 
down  with  undiminished  advantage.  From  these  terraces 
the  inhabitants  could  hold  their  own  against  a  far  superior 
force.  Besides,  the  tenements  were  generally  built  around  a 
square,  so  that  their  sheer  back  walls  presented  a  cliff-like  and 


AN   ANCIENT   CLIFF-DWELLING. 


100   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

unbroken  obstacle  which  no  savage  foe  could  scale,  while 
their  fronts  faced  upon  the  safe  inner  inclosure.  At  Pecos 
(now  deserted),  which-was  the  largest  pueblo  in  the  southwest, 
and  at  many  smaller  towns,  an  Indian  could  step  from  his 
door  and  walk  around  the  whole  town  on  any  one  of  the  tiers 
of  roofs.  Sometimes  these  community-houses  were  terraced 
on  both  sides ;  and  the  two  at  Taos  are  like  huge  pyramids, 
terraced  on  all  four  sides. 

These  fine  stone  walls  were  generally  plastered  inside  and 
out  with  adobe  clay,  which  made  them  very  smooth  and  neat, 
particularly  when  brilliantly  whitewashed,  according  to  the 
Pueblo  custom,  with  gypsum.  The  rafters  are  the  straight 
trunks  of  tapering  pines  stripped  of  their  bark,  and  above 
these  is  a  roof  of  cross-sticks,  straw,  and  clay,  which  is 
perfectly  water-tight.  The  windows  are  all  small — another 
relic  of  the  old  days  of  danger — and  in  the  more  primitive 
houses  the  windows  are  only  translucent  sheets  of  gypsum. 
Nearly  every  room  has  its  queer  southwestern  fireplace,  in 
which  the  sticks  are  burned  on  end.  Those  for  heating  alone 
are  very  tiny,  and  stand  in  a  corner  j  but  the  cooking  fire- 
places often  fill  one  side  of  a  room,  and  under  one  of  their 
capacious  "hoods"  nearly  a  dozen  people  could  sit. 

As  you  may  imagine  from  what  has  been  said  of  their 
houses,  the  Pueblos  are  very  peculiar  and  interesting  Indians 
They  live  very  neatly  and  comfortably,  and  their  homes  are 
generally  as  clean  as  wax.  They  are  peaceable  and  indus- 
trious, good  hunters  and  brave  warriors  when  need  be,  but 
quiet  farmers  by  profession,  as  they  were  when  the  outside 


JWIVERSI1  v 
£*CAUFO*S£- 


HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS.          103 

world  first  found  them.  They  have  always  elected  their  own 
officials,  and  they  obey  the  laws  both  of  their  own  strange 
government  and  of  the  United  States  in  a  way  which  they 
certainly  did  not  learn  from  us,  for  there  is  no  American 
community  nearly  so  law-abiding.  They  are  entirely  self- 
supporting,  and  receive  nothing  from  our  government.  They 
are  not  poor  nor  lazy,  and  they  do  not  impose  servile  tasks 
upon  their  wives.  One  of  my  Pueblo  neighbors  in  Isleta  lent 
the  hard  cash  to  pay  off  our  troops  in  New  Mexico  during 
the  civil  war ! 

Quite  as  interesting  and  remarkable  as  the  best  types  of 
present  Pueblo  communal  houses  are  the  ruins  of  their 
still  more  ancient  homes.  It  was  long  supposed  that  the 
so-called  "  Cliff  -builders ".  and  "Cave-dwellers"  were  of  an 
extinct  race  ;  and  much  more  of  silly  and  ignorant  surmise 
than  of  common-sense  truth  has  been  written  about  them. 
But  as  soon  as  there  was  any  really  scientific  investigation 
of  the  southwest,  like  Bandolier's  wonderful  researches,  the 
fact  was  fully  and  finally  established  that  the  builders  of 
these  great  ruins  were  nothing  in  the  world  but  Pueblo 
Indians.  They  have  not  "vanished,"  but  simply  moved,  for 
a  variety  of  reasons;  and  their  descendants  are  living  to 
this  day  in  later  pueblos.  Indeed,  we  now  know  the  history 
of  many  of  these  ruins ;  and  the  Indians  themselves,  that  of 
all  or  nearly  all. 

The  Pueblos  used  always  to  build  in  places  which  Nature 
herself  had  made  secure,  and  generally  upon  the  top  of  mesas, 
or  "  islands  "  of  rock.  Those  who  settled  among  the  peculiar 


104   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

terraced  canons  which  abound  in  some  parts  of  the  south- 
west usually  built  their  towns  upon  the  shelves  of  the  cliff  j 
while  those  whose  region  furnished  precipices  of  easily  carved 
stone  hollowed  out  caves  therein  for  their  dwellings.  It  all 
depended  on  the  locality  and  the  surroundings. 

A  canon  of  the  "  Cliff-builders "  is  a  wonderfully  pictu- 
resque and  interesting  place.  The  stratification  was  a  great 
help  to  the  builders  of  these  strange  chasm-towns,  and  doubt- 
less first  suggested  to  them  the  idea  of  putting  their  houses 
there.  The  cliffs  are  many  times  as  far  apart,  in  such  a 
canon,  at  their  tops  as  at  the  bottom,  and  a  cross-section  of 
the  canon  would  look  something  like  this : 


Sometimes  there  is  a  perennial  stream  at  the  bottom,  but 
of tener,  in  this  arid  region,  the  dry  season  leaves  only  a  chain 
of  pools,  which  were,  however,  adequate  for  the  water-supply 
of  these  communities.  The  several  lower  shelves  of  the 
gorge  were  never  built  upon,  and  the  water  was  all  carried 
several  hundred  feet  up  the  cliff  in  earthen  jars  or  tight- 
woven  baskets  on  the  heads  of  the  industrious  housewives. 
Such  inconvenience  of  the  water- works  has  never  deterred 
the  Pueblos,  and  it  is  a  striking  commentary  upon  the  sav- 
age dangers  of  their  old  life  to  see  at  what  a  fearful  expense 


HOMES   THAT   WERE   FOETS. 


105 


of  toil  they  brought  water 
any  distance  to  a  place  that 
was  safe.  At  Acoina  to  this 
day  every  drop  of  drinking- 
water  is  brought  in  jars  half 
a  mile  over  an  enormously 
difficult  cliff  trail,  and  in 
some  of  the  old-time  pueblos 
the  daily  water- journey  was 
even  worse.  They  never 
brought  water  thus  and 
filled  tanks  inside  the  town, 
as  some  have  fancied,  but 
stored  it  only  in  their  earth- 
en tinajas. 

But  safety  was  before 
water,  and  so  the  swarthy 
people  built  their  homes  far 
up  the  side  of  the  cliff,  and 
there  was  a  great  saving  of 
labor  in  another  way.  As 
a  rule  the  alternate  strata  in 
those  canons  are  of  differ- 
ent kinds  of  rock,  and  une- 
qually eroded.  Between  each 
pair  of  harder  strata  the 
softer  intermediate  one  had 
been  so  gnawed  out  by  wind 


HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS.          107 

and  water  that  its  neighbors  above  and  below  projected 
many  feet  beyond  it,  the  lower  one  always  farthest  j  so  there 
the  "  Cliff  -builder  "  found  that  nature  had  made  ready  to  his 
hand  three  of  the  six  sides  of  every  room.  The  smooth,  solid 
rock  of  the  shelf  was  his  floor,  and  a  narrow  but  endless 
porch  outside  as  well.  The  overhanging  rock  of  the  ledge 
above  was  his  roof — frequently  a  very  low  one,  but  certainly 
water-tight — and  the  face  of  the  intermediate  stratum  was 
his  back  wall.  He  had  only  to  build  three  little  stone  walls 
from  stone  floor  to  stone  roof — a  front  wall  and  two  end 
walls — and  there  was  his  house. 

These  cliff-rooms  were  extremely  small,  varying  according 
to  the  strata,  but  seldom  more  than  a  dozen  feet  long,  eight 
or  ten  feet  deep,  and  five  to  eight  feet  high.  In  many  of 
them  no  ordinary  person  could  stand  erect.  There  were  sel- 
dom any  windows;  and  the  doors,  which  served  also  as 
chimneys,  were  very  low  and  but  twelve  to  eighteen  inches 
wide.  An  enemy  at  the  very  door  would  be  so  crouched  and 
cramped  in  entering,  that  those  within  could  take  him  at  a 
disadvantage. 

Think  of  a  town  whose  sidewalks  were  three  or  four  feet 
wide,  and  more  than  that  number  of  hundred  feet  apart, 
and  between  them  a  stiipendous  gutter  five  hundred  feet 
deep !  Think  of  those  fat,  dimpled,  naked  brown  babies, 
whose  three-foot  play-ground  had  no  fence  against  a  tumble 
of  half  a  thousand  feet ! 

There  are  several  of  these  canons  of  the  "  Cliff-builders " 
easily  accessible  from  the  A.  &  P.  R.  R.  at  Flagstaff,  Arizona. 


108   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

They  are  gigantic  gashes  in  the  level  uplands ;  one  comes  to 
their  very  brink  without  the  remotest  suspicion  that  such  an 
abyss  is  in  front.  One  of  these  canons  is  over  twenty  miles 
long,  and  in  places  six  hundred  feet  deep.  It  contains  the 
ruins  of  about  a  thousand  of  these  small  cliff-houses,  some  of 
which  are  very  well  preserved.  These  are  the  easiest  to  reach 
of  any  of  this  class  of  ruins,  being  less  than  ten  miles  from 
the  railroad  station  and  hotels.  There  are  hundreds  of  other 
canons  in  Arizona,  New  Mexico,  and  the  lower  corners  of 
Colorado  and  Utah  presenting  the  same  sort  of  cliff -houses ; 
but  most  of  them  are  in  the  wilderness,  at  great  distances 
from  the  railroad  or  any  other  convenience  of  civilization. 

In  most  of  these  houses  there  is  little  to  be  found.  Furni- 
ture they  never  had,  and  most  of  the  implements  have  been 
carried  away  by  the  removing  inhabitants  or  by  subsequent 
roving  Indians.  The  floors  are  one  and  two  feet  deep  with  the 
dust  of  ages,  mingled  with  nut-shells  and  thorns  brought  in 
by  the  rock-squirrels  which  are  now  the  only  tenants.  Dig- 
ging is  made  painful  by  a  thousand  thorn -stabs  and  by  sti- 
fling clouds  of  that  flour-like  dust ;  but  it  is  often  rewarded. 
All  about  are  strewn  broken  bits  of  prehistoric  pottery,  and 
the  veriest  mummies  of  corn-cobs,  shrunken  by  centuries  of 
that  dry  air  to  the  size  of  a  finger  and  hardened  almost  to 
flint.  There  are  also  occasional  squash-stems,  as  wizened  and 
as  indurated.  By  digging  to  the  bed-rock  floor  I  have  found 
fine  stone  axes,  beautiful  agate  arrow-points,  the  puzzling 
discoidal  stones,  and  even  baskets  of  yucca  fiber  exactly  like 
the  strange  "  plaques  "  made  in  Moqui  to-day.  The  baskets 


10 


•UNIVERSITY  ] 
J*  CAUFOSJ*^ 


HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS.          Ill 

crumbled  to  dust  soon  after  they  were  exposed  to  the  air. 
There  are  few  other  countries  so  dry  that  a  basket  of  slender 
vegetable  threads  would  hold  its  patterns  for  four  hundred 
years  or  more  under  a  foot  of  soil. 

Between  the  small  cliff-houses  already  described  and  the 
cave-dwellings  there  is  a  very  curious  link — houses,  or  even 
whole  towns,  built  in  a  natural  cave.  "  Montezuma's  Castle  " 
is  such  a  one,  and  there  are  many,  many  others,  of  which 
probably  the  best-known — thanks  to  Jackson's  expedition — 
are  the  fine  ruins  on  the  Mancos.  Most  of  the  important 
ruins  of  the  Canon  de  Tsay-ee  and  its  tributaries,  Canon 
del  Muerto  and  Monumental  Canon,  are  also  of  this  class. 
These  caves  are  not,  like  the  Mammoth  Cave,  great  subter- 
ranean passages,  but  great  hollows,  generally  like  a  huge 
bowl  set  up  on  edge  in  the  face  of  the  cliff.  They  absolutely 
protect  the  inclosed  town  (which  is  frequently  one  building 
of  enormous  size)  above,  on  both  sides,  and  generally  also 
below.  They  are  usually  high  up  from  the  bottom  of  the 
cliff,  and  between  them  and  the  foot  is  a  precipitous  ascent 
which  no  enemy  could  scale  if  any  resistance  whatever  were 
made.  Such  towns  could  be  captured  only  by  surprise, 
as  we  know  that  in  very  rare  cases  some  were  captured. 
Some  observant  but  uninformed  travelers  have  been  sadly 
misled  by  the  regular,  round  cavities  which  are  found  in  the 
ground  near  these  lofty  pueblos,  and  have  taken  them  for 
water-tanks.  Such  a  notion  could  arise  only  from  entire 
ignorance  both  of  the  history  and  the  ethnology  of  the  south- 
west. These  circular  cavities  are  the  remains  of  the  estufas, 


THE  CUEVA   PINTADA,    OR    "PAINTED   CAVE." 


HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS.  113 

or  sacred  rooms  of  the  men,  which  were  generally  made  un- 
derground. The  roofs  have  long  ago  disappeared,  and  only 
these  pits  are  left.  They  never  had  anything  more  to  do 
with  water  than  the  fireplaces  had;  the  Pueblo  reservoirs 
were  something  entirely  different. 

These  huge  houses  were  generally  far  from  regular,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  there  never  was  a  "  master-architect " 
to  control  the  structure.  Every  family  built  its  part  of  the 
tenement  to  suit  itself.  There  could  be  no  "  bossing  "  in  such 
things,  for  Indians  are  essentially  tribal,  and  under  that  or- 
ganization anything  like  a  feudal  authority  is  an  absolute 
impossibility.  Still,  the  builders  agreed  fairly  well  as  to  the 
general  plan,  and  the  great  structure  was  sometimes  very 
symmetrical. 

The  romantic  Cueva  Pintada,*  which  not  a  dozen  white 
men  have  ever  seen,  is  a  very  good  type  of  these  caves  on  a 
smaller  scale,  being  only  some  fifty  feet  in  diameter.  It  looks 
very  much  like  the  bowl  of  a  gigantic  ladle  set  into  the 
cliff  fifty  feet  above  its  foot.  It  contains  several  cave-dwell- 
ings, but  no  houses  of  masonry,  though  these  occur  at  other 
points  of  the  cliff. 

To  me  the  real  cave-dwellings  are  the  most  interesting  of 
all  these  strange  sorts  of  prehistoric  ruins.  They  are  prob- 
ably no  older  than  the  cliff-built  houses ;  as  I  have  said,  those 
differences  were  not  of  time,  or  development,  or  tribe,  but 
merely  of  locality,  but  they  seem  so  much  farther  from  us. 

*  "Painted  Cave,"  so  called  from  the  strange  pictographs  in  red 
ocher  which  adorn  its  concave  walls. 


114   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

To  see  them  carries  one  back  to  the  times  when  our  own 
ancestors  and  all  mankind  dwelt  in  caves  and  wore  only  the 
skins  of  wild  beasts  j  those  far,  dim  days  when  there  was  not 
even  iron,  nor  any  other  metal,  and  when  fire  itself  was  new, 
and  the  savage  stomach  was  all  the  conscience  and  all  the 
brains  that  man  knew  he  had. 

The  most  extensive  and  wonderful  cave-communities  in 
the  world  are  in  the  great  Cochiti  upland,  some  fifty  miles 
northwest  of  Santa  Fe.  The  journey  is  a  very  laborious  one, 
but  by  no  means  dangerous  j  and  if  you  can  get  my  good 
Indian  compadre*  Jose  Hilario  Montoya,  now  governor  of 
the  pueblo  of  Cochiti,  to  guide  you,  you  are  apt  to  remember 
it  as  the  most  interesting  expedition  of  your  life.  The  coun- 
try itself  is  well  worth  a  long  journey  to  see,  for  it  is  one 
of  the  wildest  in  North  America.  The  enormous  plateau  is 
split  with  canons  from  the  mountains  to  the  deep- worn  river ; 
and  the  mesas  which  separate  them  are  long  triangles  which 
break  off  in  thousand-foot  cliffs  in  the  chasm  of  the  Rio 
Grande,  their  narrow  points  looking  like  stupendous  col- 
umns, whence  they  get  their  Spanish  name  potreros.  The 
whole  area  is  like  the  foot  of  some  unspeakable  giant  with 
dozens  of  toes,  set  down  beside  the  hoarse,  gray  river. 

The  whole  region  for  thousands  of  square  miles — like  the 
majority,  indeed,  of  New  Mexico — is  volcanic.  But  here  we 
see  less  of  the  vast  lava-flows  so  common  in  other  parts  of 
the  territory.  Instead,  there  is  an  unprecedented  deposit  of 
further-consumed  matter  from  the  forgotten  fire-mountains. 

*  Chum. 


MUMMY   CAVE  AND  VILLAGE,   CANON  DEL  MUERTO,   ARIZONA. 


HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS.          117 

When  I  was  a  boy  in  New  England,  I  thought  the  "floating 
stone"  with  which  I  scrubbed  my  dingy  fists  was  a  great 
curiosity  j  but  in  the  gorges  of  the  Cochiti  upland  are  cliffs 
one  thousand  five  hundred  feet  high,  and  miles  long,  of  solid 
pumice.  There  is  enough  "  stone  that  will  float"  to  take  the 
stains  from  all  the  boy  hands  in  the  world  for  all  time. 

In  this  noble  and  awesome  wilderness  several  tribes  of 
Pueblo  Indians  dwelt  in  prehistoric  times.  It  probably  did 
not  take  them  long  to  learn  that  in  such  a  country  of  soft 
cliff  it  was  rather  easier  to  dig  one's  house  than  to  build  it, 
even  when  the  carpenter  had  no  better  tools  than  a  sharp 
splinter  of  volcanic  glass.  The  volcanoes  did  some  good, 
you  see,  in  this  land  which  they  burned  dry  forever;  for  in 
the  same  cliff  they  put  the  soft  stone  from  which  any  one 
could  cut  a  house,  and  nuggets  of  the  extremely  hard  glass 
which  the  same  eruption  had  made,  wherefrom  to  chip  the 
prehistoric  "  knife." 

In  the  superbly  picturesque  canon  of  the  Rito  de  los 
Frigoles*  is  the  largest  of  all  villages  of  caves,  deserted 
for  more  than  four  hundred  years.  Outside  its  unnumbered 
cave-rooms  were  more  rooms  yet,  of  masonry  of  "  bricks  n  cut 
from  the  same  cliff. 

A  few  miles  farther  up  the  Rio  Grande,  not  down  in  a  canon 
but  on  the  top  of  the  great  plateau  nearly  two  thousand  feet 
above  the  river,  are  two  huge  castle-like  buttes  of  chalky  tufa, 
each  some  two  hundred  feet  high.  They  stand  one  on  each 
side  of  the  dividing  gulf  of  the  Santa  Clara  canon,  and  are 
*  "Brook  of  the  beans." 


118    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

known  to  the  Indians  respectively  as  the  Pu-ye  and  the  Shii- 
fin-ne.  They  are  the  most  easily  accessible  of  the  large  cave- 
villages  of  North  America,  being  not  over  ten  miles  from 
the  little  railroad  town  of  Espanola,  on  the  Rio  Grande  some 
thirty  miles  by  rail  from  Santa  Fe.  Going  up  the  lovely 
Santa  Clara  canon,  past  the  now  inhabited  pueblo  of  that 
name,  along  the  musical  trout-brook  to  where  an  old  mill  once 
stood  among  the  tall  pines,  one  can  clamber  up  a  trail  on 
either  side  of  the  canon  to  the  plateau  at  the  top,  and  thence 
less  than  an  hour's  walk  will  take  one  to  either  of  these  great 
aboriginal  honeycomb  homes.  The  Pu-ye,  which  is  on  the 
south  side  of  the  canon,  is  the  largest,  and  has  many  hun- 
dreds of  cave-rooms.  They  are  burrowed  out  everywhere  in 
the  foot  of  the  perpendicular  white  cliff,  in  tiers  one  above 
the  other  to  a  height  of  three  stories.  The  caves  are  small, 
generally  round  rooms  eight  to  twelve  feet  in  diameter,  with 
arched  ceilings  and  barely  high  enough  to  allow  a  man  to 
stand  upright.  The  old  smooth  plaster  on  the  walls  remains 
to  this  day,  and  so  do  the  little  portholes  of  windows,  and 
the  niches  for  trinkets.  In  some  places  there  is  even  a  sec- 
ond cave-room  back  of  the  first.  Here,  and  at  the  Rito,  the 
estufas  were  carved  out  of  the  cliff,  like  the  other  rooms,  but 
larger.  Upon  the  top  of  the  cliff,  and  in  an  almost  impreg- 
nable position,  are  the  ruins  of  a  large  square  pueblo  built  of 
blocks  of  tufa — evidently  the  fortress  and  retreat  of  the 
dwellers  in  the  caves  in  case  of  a  very  desperate  attack. 
Against  any  ordinary  assault,  the  masonry  houses  "down- 
stairs," so  to  speak,  with  their  inner  cave-rooms,  were  safe 


ViHilii   HUlsli,   CANON   t>li   TSAY»EE, 


HOMES  THAT  WERE  FORTS.          121 

enough.  These  houses  of  masonry  at  the  foot  of  the  cliff 
have  all  fallen  j  but  in  the  rocks  the  mortises  which  held  the 
ends  of  their  rafters  are  still  plainly  visible. 

In  this  same  wild  region  are  the  only  great  stone  idols  (or, 
to  speak  more  properly,  fetiches)  in  the  United  States — the 
mountain  lions  of  Cochiti.  They  are  life-size,  and  carved  from 
the  solid  bed-rock  on  the  top  of  two  huge  mesas.  To  this 
day,  the  Indians  of  Cochiti  before  a  hunt  go  to  one  of  these 
almost  inaccessible  spots,  anoint  the  great  stone  heads,  and 
dance  by  night  a  wild  dance  which  no  white  man  has  seen  or 
ever  will  see. 


11 


MONTEZUMA'S  WELL. 


.R  southwest  of  Moqui,  and  still  in  the 
edge  of  the  great  Dry  Land,  is  what  I 
am  inclined  to  rank  as  the  most  remarkable 
area  of  its  kind  in  the  southwest — though 
in  this  wonderland  it  is  difficult  enough  to 
award  that  preeminence  to  any  one  locality. 
At  least  in  its  combination  of  archaeologic 
interest  with  scenic  beauty  and  with  some 
peerless  natural  curiosities,  what  may  be 
called  the  Mogollon  watershed  is  one  of  the  most  startling 
regions  in  America  or  in  the  world. 

The  Mogollones*  are  not  a  mountain  system  as  Eastern 
people  understand  the  phrase.  There  is  no  great  range,  as 
among  the  Appalachians  and  the  Rockies.  The  "  system  "  is 
merely  an  enormous  plateau,  full  three  hundred  miles  across, 
and  of  an  average  height  above  the  sea  greater  than  that  of 
any  peak  in  the  East :  an  apparently  boundless  plain,  dotted 
only  here  and  there  with  its  few  lonely  "hangers-on"  or 
"parasites"  of  peaks, — like  the  noble  San  Francisco  triad 
*  Spanish,  "  The  hangers-on." 


MONTEZUMA'S  WELL.  123 

near  Flagstaff, — which  in  that  vast  expanse  seem  scarce  to 
attain  to  the  dignity  of  mounds.  On  the  north  this  huge 
table-land  melts  into  hazy  slopes ;  but  all  along  its  southern 
edge  it  breaks  off  by  sudden  and  fearful  cliffs  into  a  country 
of  indescribable  wildness.  This  great  territory  to  the  south, 
an  empire  in  size,  but  largely  desert  and  almost  entirely  wil- 
derness, has  nevertheless  the  largest  number  of  considerable 
streams  of  any  equal  area  in  the  thirsty  southwest.  The 
Gila,  the  Eio  Salado,*  the  Rio  Verde,  and  others — though 
they  would  be  petty  in  the  East,  and  though  they  are  small 
beside  the  Rio  Grande  and  the  Colorado — form,  with  their 
tributaries,  a  more  extensive  water-system  than  is  to  be  found 
elsewhere  in  our  arid  lands.  The  Tontot  Basin — scene  of 
one  of  the  brave  Crook's  most  brilliant  campaigns  against 
the  Apaches — is  part  of  this  wilderness.  Though  called  a 
"  basin/'  there  is  nothing  bowl-like  in  its  appearance,  even 
as  one  sees  down  thousands  of  feet  into  it  from  the  com- 
manding "  Rim  "  of  the  Mogollones.  It  is  rather  a  vast  chaos 
of  crags  and  peaks  apparently  rolled  into  it  from  the  great 
breaking-off  place — the  wreck  left  by  forgotten  waters  of 
what  was  once  part  of  the  Mogollon  plateau. 

About  this  Tonto  Basin,  which  is  some  fifty  miles  across, 
cluster  many  of  the  least-known  yet  greatest  wonders  of  our 
country.  South  are  the  noble  ruins  of  Casa  Grande,  and  all 
the  Gila  Valley's  precious  relics  of  the  prehistoric.  The  Salt 
River  Valley  is  one  of  the  richest  of  fields  for  archaeologic 

*  ''Salt  River,"  a  fine  stream  whose  waters  are  really  salt  at  points 
where  great  springs  well  up. 
t  "Tonto"  is  Spanish  for  fool. 


124   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

research  j  and  the  country  of  the  Verde  is  nowise  behind  it. 
All  across  that  strange  area  of  forbidding  wildernesses, 
threaded  with  small  valleys  that  are  green  with  the  outposts 
of  civilization,  are  strewn  the  gray  monuments  of  a  civiliza- 
tion that  had  worn  out  antiquity,  and  had  perished  and  been 
forgotten  before  ever  a  Caucasian  foot  had  touched  the  New 
World.  The  heirlooms  of  an  unknown  past  are  everywhere. 
No  man  has  ever  counted  the  crumbling  ruins  of  all  those 
strange  little  stone  cities  whose  history  and  whose  very 
names  have  gone  from  off  the  face  of  the  earth  as  if  they  had 
never  been.  Along  every  stream,  near  every  spring,  on  lofty 
lookout-crags,  and  in  the  faces  of  savage  cliffs,  are  the  long- 
deserted  homes  of  that  mysterious  race — mysterious  even 
now  that  we  know  their  descendants.  Thousands  of  these 
homes  are  perfect  yet,  thousands  no  more  changed  from  the 
far,  dim  days  when  their  swart  dwellers  lived  and  loved  and 
suffered  and  toiled  there,  than  by  the  gathered  dust  of  ages. 
Very,  very  few  Americans  have  ever  at  all  explored  this  Last 
Place  in  the  World.  It  has  not  been  a  score  of  years  known 
to  our  civilization.  There  is  hardly  ever  a  traveler  to  those 
remote  recesses ;  and  of  the  Americans  who  are  settling  the 
pretty  oases,  a  large  proportion  have  never  seen  the  wonders 
within  a  few  leagues  of  them.  It  is  a  far,  toilsome  land  to 
reach,  and  yet  there  is  no  reason  why  any  young  American 
of  average  health  should  not  visit  this  wonderland,  which 
is  as  much  more  thrilling  than  any  popular  American  resort 
as  the  White  Mountains  are  more  thrilling  than  Coney  Island 
on  a  quiet  day. 


MONTEZUMA'S  WELL.  125 

The  way  to  reach  this  strangely  fascinating  region  is  by 
the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Railroad  to  Prescott  Junction,  Ari- 
zona, four  hundred  and  twenty-eight  miles  west  of  Albu- 
querque. Thence  a  little  railroad  covers  the  seventy  miles 
to  Prescott ;  and  from  Prescott  one  goes  by  the  mail-buck- 
board  or  by  private  conveyance  to  Camp  Verde,  forty-three 
miles.  Camp  Verde  is  the  best  headquarters  for  any  who 
would  explore  the  marvelous  country  about  it.  Comfortable 
accommodations  are  there  j  and  there  can  be  procured  the 
needful  horses — for  thenceforward  horseback  travel  is  far 
preferable,  even  when  not  absolutely  necessary.  There  is  no 
danger  whatever  nowadays.  The  few  settlers  are  intelligent, 
law-abiding  people,  among  whom  the  traveler  fares  very 
comfortably. 

The  Verde*  Valley  is  itself  full  of  interest ;  and  so  are  all 
its  half -valley,  half -canon  tributaries — Oak  Creek,  Beaver 
Creek,  Clear  Creek,  Fossil  Creek,  and  the  rest.  Away  to  the 
north,  over  the  purple  rim-rock  of  the  Mogollones,  peer  the 
white  peaks  of  the  San  Francisco  range  (one  can  also  come 
to  the  Verde  from  Flagstaff,  by  a  rough  but  interesting 
eighty-mile  ride  overland).  All  about  the  valley  are  mesas  j 
and  cliffs  so  tall,  so  strange  in  form  and  color,  so  rent  by 
shadowy  canons  as  to  seem  fairly  unearthly.  And  follow 
whatever  canon  or  cliff  you  will,  you  shall  find  everywhere 
more  of  these  strange  ruins.  They  are  so  many  hundreds, 

*  Rio  Verde,  "Green  River," — so  called  from  the  verdure  of  its  val- 
ley, which  is  in  such  contrast  with  its  weird  surroundings, 
t  Table-lands. 


126   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 


MONTEZUMA  S   WELL. 


that  while  all  are  of  deep  interest  I  can  here  describe  only 
the  more  striking  types. 

Beaver  Creek  enters  the  Rio  Verde  about  a  mile  above  the 
now  abandoned  fort.  Its  canon  is  by  no  means  a  large  one, 
though  it  has  some  fine  points.  A  long  and  rocky  twelve 
miles  up  Beaver,  past  smiling  little  farms  of  to-day  that  have 
usurped  the  very  soil  of  fields  whose  tilling  had  been  forgot- 


MOXTEZUMA'S  WELL.  127 

ten  when  history  was  new,  brings  one  to  a  wonder  which  is 
not  "  the  greatest  of  its  kind/'  but  the  only.  There  is,  I  be- 
lieve, nothing  else  like  it  in  the  world. 

It  has  been  named — by  the  class  which  has  pitted  the 
southwest  with  misnomers — "Montezuma's  Well."  It  is 
hardly  a  well, — though  an  exact  term  is  difficult  to  find, — and 
Montezuma*  never  had  anything  to  do  with  it  j  but  it  is  none 
the  less  wonderful  under  its  misfit  name.  There  is  a  legend 
(of  late  invention)  that  Montezuma,  after  being  conquered 
by  Cortez,  threw  his  incalculable  treasure  into  this  safest  of 
hiding-places ;  but  that  is  all  a  myth,  since  Montezuma  had 
no  treasures,  and  in  any  event  could  hardly  have  brought 
the  fabled  tons  of  gold  across  two  thousand  miles  of  desert 
to  this  "  well,"  even  if  he  had  ever  stirred  outside  the  pueblo 
of  Mexico  after  the  Spaniards  came — as  he  never  did.  But 
as  one  looks  into  the  awesome  abyss,  it  is  almost  easy  to  for- 
get history  and  believe  anything. 

At  this  point,  Beaver  Creek  has  eaten  away  the  side  of  a 
rounded  hill  of  stone  which  rises  more  than  one  hundred  feet 
above  it,  and  now  washes  the  foot  of  a  sheer  cliff  of  striking 
picturesqueness.  I  can  half  imagine  the  feelings  of  the  first 
white  man  who  ever  climbed  that  hill.  Its  outer  show  gives 
no  greater  promise  of  interest  than  do  ten  thousand  other 
elevations  in  the  southwest ;  but  as  one  reaches  a  flat  shoul- 
der of  the  hill,  one  gets  a  first  glimpse  of  a  dark  rift  in  the 
floor-like  rock,  and  in  a  moment  more  stands  upon  the  brink 

*  The  war-chief  of  an  ancient  league  of  Mexican  Indians,  and  not 
"Emperor  of  Mexico,"  as  ill-informed  historians  assert. 


128   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

of  an  absolutely  new  experience.  There  is  a  vast,  sheer  well, 
apparently  as  circular  as  that  peculiar  rock  could  be  broken  by 
design,  with  sides  of  cliffs,  and  with  a  gloomy,  mysterious  lake 
at  the  bottom.  The  diameter  of  this  basin  approximates  two 
•hundred  yards ;  and  its  depth  from  brink  of  cliff  to  surface 
of  water  is  some  eighty  feet.  One  does  not  realize  the  dis- 
tance across  until  a  powerful  thrower  tries  to  hurl  a  pebble 
to  the  farther  wall.  I  believe  that  no  one  has  succeeded  in 
throwing  past  the  middle  of  the  lake.  At  first  sight  one  in- 
variably takes  this  remarkable  cavity  to  be  the  crater  of  an 
extinct  volcano,  like  that  in  the  Zuni  plains  already  referred 
to  j  but  a  study  of  the  unburnt  limestone  makes  one  give  up 
that  theory.  The  well  is  a  huge  "sink"  of  the  horizontal 
strata  in  one  particular  undermined  spot,  the  loosened  circle 
of  rock  dropping  forever  from  sight  into  a  terrible  subter- 
ranean abyss  which  was  doubtless  hollowed  out  by  the  ac- 
tion of  springs  far  down  in  the  lime-rock.  As  to  the  depth 
of  that  gruesome,  black  lake,  there  is  not  yet  knowledge.  I 
am  assured  that  a  sounding-line  has  been  sent  down  three 
hundred  and  eighty  feet,  in  a  vain  attempt  to  find  bottom ; 
and  that  is  easily  credible.  Toss  a  large  stone  into  that  mid- 
night mirror,  and  for  an  hour  the  bubbles  will  struggle  shiv- 
ering up  from  its  unknown  depths. 

The  waters  do  not  lave  the  foot  of  a  perpendicular  cliff  all 
around  the  sides  of  that  fantastic  well.  The  unfathomed 
"  slump  "  is  in  the  center,  and  is  separated  from  the  visible 
walls  by  a  narrow,  submerged  rim.  One  can  wade  out  a  few 
feet  in  knee- deep  water, — if  one  have  the  courage  in  that 


MONTEZUMA'S  WELL.  129 

"creepy"  place, — and  then,  suddenly,  as  walking  from  a 
parapet,  step  off  into  the  bottomless.  Between  this  water- 
covered  rim  and  the  foot  of  the  cliff  is,  in  most  places,  a  wild 
jumble  of  enormous  square  blocks,  fallen  successively  from 
the  precipices  and  lodged  here  before  they  could  tumble  into 
the  lower  depths. 

There  are  two  places  where  the  cliff  can  be  descended  from 
top  to  water's  edge.  Elsewhere  it  is  inaccessijtfe.  Its  dark, 
stained  face,  split  by  peculiar  cleavage  into 'the  semblance 
of  giant  walls,  frowns  down  upon  its  frowning  image  in  that 
dark  mirror.  The  whole  scene  is  one  of  utter  grimness. 
Even  the  eternal  blue  of  an  Arizona  sky,  even  the  rare  fleecy 
clouds,  seem  mocked  and  changed  in  that  deep  reflection. 

Walking  around  the  fissured  "brink  of  the  well  eastward, 
we  become  suddenly  aware  of  a  new  interest — the  presence 
of  a  human  Past.  Next  the  creek,  the  side  of  the  well  is 
nearly  gone.  Only  a  narrow,  high  wall  of  rock,  perhaps  one 
hundred  feet  through  at  the  base,  less  than  a  score  at  the  top, 
remains  to  keep  the  well  a  well.  On  one  side  of  this  thin 
rim  gapes  the  abyss  of  the  well ;  on  the  other  the  abyss  to 
the  creek.  Upon  this  wall — leaving  scarce  room  to  step  be- 
tween them  and  the  brink  of  the  well,  and  precariously  cling- 
ing down  the  steep  slope  to  the  edge  of  the  cliff  that  over- 
hangs the  creek — are  the  tousled  ruins  of  a  strong  stone 
building  of  many  rooms,  the  typical  fort-home  of  the  ancient 
Pueblos.  Its  walls  are  still,  in  places,  six  to  eight  feet  high ; 
and  the  student  clearly  makes  out  that  the  building  was  of 
two  and  three  stories.  It  was  a  perfect  defense  to  the  In- 


130   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

dians  who  erected  it  j  and  was  not  only  safe  itself  on  that 
commanding  perch,  but  protected  the  approach  to  the  well. 
This  is  the  only  town  I  know  of  that  was  ever  builded  upon 
a  natural  bridge ;  as  some  houses  in  this  same  region  are 
probably  the  only  ones  placed  under  such  a  curiosity. 

Leading  from  the  center  of  this  fort-house,  the  only  easy 
trail  descends  into  the  well ;  and  it  is  so  steep  that  no  foe 
could  prosper  on  it  in  the  face  of  any  opposition.  This  brings 
us  to  a  tiny  green  bench  six  or  eight  feet  above  the  level  of 
the  dark  lake,  where  two  young  sycamores  and  a  few  live-oak 
bushes  guard  a  black  cavity  in  the  overhanging  cliff.  We 
look  across  the  dark  waters  to  the  western  wall,  and  are 
startled  to  see  in  its  face  a  perfect  cliff-house,  perched  where 
the  eagle  might  build  his  nest.  A  strange  eerie  for  a  home, 
surely !  There,  on  a  dizzy  little  shelf,  overhung  by  a  huge 
flat  rock  which  roofs  it,  stands  this  two-roomed  type  of  the 
human  dwelling  in  the  old  danger-days.  From  its  window- 
hole  a  babe  might  lean  out  until  he  saw  his  dimpled  image 
in  the  somber  sheet  below.  Only  at  one  end  of  the  house, 
where  a  difficult  trail  comes  up,  is  there  room  on  the  shelf 
for  a  dozen  men  to  stand.  In  front,  and  at  its  north  end,  a 
goat  could  scarce  find  footing.  The  roof  and  floor  and  rear 
wall  are  of  the  solid  cliff,  the  other  three  walls  of  stone  ma- 
sonry, perfect  and  unbroken  still.  A  few  rods  along  the 
face  of  the  rock  to  the  north  is  another  cliff-dwelling  not  so 
large  nor  so  well  preserved  j  and  farther  yet  is  another.  It 
is  fairly  appalling  to  look  at  those  dizzy  nests  and  remember 
that  they  were  homes  !  What  eagle-race  was  this  whose  war- 


MONTEZUMA'S  WELL.  131 

riors  strung  their  bows,  and  whose  women  wove  their  neat 
cotton  tunics,  and  whose  naked  babes  rolled  and  laughed  in 
such  wild  lookouts — the  scowling  cliff  above,  the  deadly  lake 
so  far  below !  Or,  rather,  what  grim  times  were  those  when 
farmers  had  to  dwell  thus  to  escape  the  cruel  obsidian  knife* 
and  war-club  of  the  merciless  wandering  savage ! 

But  if  we  turn  to  the  sycamore  at  our  back,  there  is  yet 
more  of  human  interest.  Behind  the  gray  debris  of  the  cliff 
gapes  the  low-arched  mouth  of  a  broad  cave.  It  is  a  weird 
place  to  enter,  under  tons  that  threaten  to  fall  at  a  breath  • 
but  there  have  been  others  here  before  us.  As  the  eye  grows 
wonted  to  the  gloom,  it  makes  out  a  flat  surface  beyond. 
There,  forty  feet  back  from  the  mouth,  a  strong  stone  wall 
stretches  across  the  cave  j  and  about  in  its  center  is  one  of 
the  tiny  doors  that  were  characteristic  of  the  southwest  when 
a  doorway  big  enough  to  let  in  a  whole  Apache  at  a  time  was 
unsafe.  So  the  fort-house  balanced  on  the  cliff-rim  between 
two  abysses  and  the  houses  nestled  in  crannies  of  the  bald 
precipice  were  not  enough — they  must  build  far  in  the  very 
caves !  That  wall  shuts  off  a  large,  low,  dark  room.  Beyond 
is  another,  darker  and  safer,  and  so  on.  To  our  left  is  an- 
other wall  in  the  front  of  another  branch  of  the  cave  j  and 
in  that  wall  is  a  little  token  from  the  dead  past.  When  I  went 
there  in  June,  1891,  my  flash-light  failed,  and  I  lit  a  dry 
entrana\  to  explore  during  the  hour  it  would  take  the  lens 

*  The  only  knives  in  those  days  were  sharp-edged  flakes  of  obsidian 
(volcanic  glass)  and  other  stone. 

t  The  buckhorn-cactus,  which  was  the  prehistoric  candle. 


132   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

to  study  out  part  of  the  cave  in  that  gloom.  And  suddenly 
the  unaccustomed  tears  came  in  my  eyes ;  for  on  the  flinty 
mortar  of  that  strange  wall  was  a  print  made  when  that 
mortar  was  fresh  adobe  mud,  at  least  five  hundred  years 
ago,  maybe  several  thousands, — the  perfect  imprint  of  a 
baby's  chubby  hand.  And  of  that  child,  whose  mud  auto- 
graph has  lasted  perhaps  as  long  as  Caesar's  fame,  who  may 
have  wrought  as  deep  impression  on  the  history  of  his  race 
as  Caesar  on  the  world's,  we  know  no  more  than  that  careless 
hand-print,  nor  ever  shall  know. 

This  left-hand  cave  is  particularly  full  of  interest,  and  is 
probably  the  best  remaining  example  of  this  class  of  home- 
making  by  the  so-called  "  Cliff-dwellers."  With  its  numerous 
windings  and  branches,  it  is  hundreds  of  feet  in  length ;  and 
its  rooms,  formed  by  cross- walls  of  masonry,  extend  far  into 
the  heart  of  the  hill,  and  directly  under  the  fort-house.  It 
seems  to  have  been  fitted  for  the  last  retreat  of  the  people  in 
case  the  fortress  and  the  cliff-houses  were  captured  by  an 
enemy.  It  was  well  stored  with  corn,  whose  mummied  cobs 
are  still  there;  and — equally  important — it  had  abundant 
water.  The  well  seems  to  have  no  outlet — the  only  token  of 
one  visible  from  within  being  a  little  rift  in  the  water-mosses 
just  in  front  of  the  caves.  But  in  fact  there  is  a  mysterious 
channel  far  down  under  the  cliff,  whereby  the  waters  of  the 
lake  escape  to  the  creek.  In  exploring  the  main  cave  one 
hears  the  sound  of  running  water,  and  presently  finds  a  place 
where  one  may  dip  a  drink  through  a  hole  in  the  limestone 
floor  of  a  subterranean  room.  The  course  of  this  lonely  little 


MONTEZUMA'S  WELL.  133 

brook  can  be  traced  for  some  distance  through  the  cave,  be- 
low whose  floor  it  runs.  Here  and  there  in  the  rooms  are 
lava  hand-mills  and  battered  stone  hammers,  and  other  relics 
of  the  forgotten  people.  - 

Returning  to  the  creek  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  and  follow- 
ing the  outer  cliff  up-stream  a  few  hundred  feet,  we  come  to  a 
very  picturesque  spot  under  a  fine  little  precipice  whose  foot 
is  guarded  by  stately  sycamores.  Here  is  the  outlet  of  the 
subterranean  stream  from  the  well.  From  a  little  hole  in  the 
very  base  of  the  cliff  the  glad  rivulet  rolls  out  into  the  light 
of  day,  and  tumbles  heels  over  head  down  a  little  ledge  to  a 
pretty  pool  of  the  creek. 

The  water  of  the  well  is  always  warmish,  and  in  winter  a 
little  cloud  of  vapor  hovers  over  the  outlet.  Between  the 
cliff  and  the  creek  is  pinched  an  irrigating-ditch,  which  car- 
ries the  waters  of  the  well  half  a  mile  south  to  irrigate  the 
ranch  of  a  small  farmer.  Probably  no  other  man  waters  his 
garden  from  so  strange  a  source. 


12 


XL 


MONTEZUMA'S  CASTLE. 

jOMEWHAT  more  than  half-way  back  from 
Montezuma's  Well  to  Camp  Verde,  but  off  the 
winding  road,  is  another  curiosity,  only  less 
important,  known  as  "Montezuma's  Castle." 
It  is  the  best  remaining  specimen  of  what  we 
may  call  the  cave-pueblo — that  is,  a  Pueblo  Indian  "com- 
munity-house" and  fortress,  built  in  a  natural  cave.  The 
oft-pictured  ruins  in  the  Mancos  canon  are  insignificant 
beside  it. 

Here  the  tiny  valley  of  Beaver  Creek  is  very  attractive. 
The  long  slope  from  the  south  bank  lets  us  look  far  up  to- 
ward the  black  rim  of  the  Mogollones,  and  across  the  smil- 
ing Verde  Valley  to  the  fine  range  beyond.  On  the  north 
bank  towers  a  noble  limestone  cliff,  two  hundred  feet  high, 
beautifully  white  and  beautifully  eroded.  In  its  perpendicu- 
lar front,  half-way  up,  is  a  huge,  circular  natural  cavity,  very 
much  like  a  giant  basin  tilted  on  edge  j  and  therein  stands 
the  noble  pile  of  "  Montezuma's  Castle."  A  castle  it  truly 
looks,  as  you  may  see  from  the  illustration — and  a  much 
finer  ruin  than  many  that  people  rush  abroad  to  see,  along 


"MONTEZUMA'S  CASTLE,"  SEEN  FROM  BEAVER  CREEK. 


MONTEZUMA'S  CASTLE.  137 

the  historic  Rhine.  The  form  of  the  successive  limestone 
ledges  upon  which  it  is  built  led  the  aboriginal  builders  to 
give  it  a  shape  unique  among  its  kind. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  pretentious  of  the  Pueblo  ruins,  as  it 
is  the  most  imposing,  though  there  are  many  hundreds  that 
are  larger. 

From  the  clear,  still  stream,  hemmed  in  by  giant  sycamores 
that  have  doubtless  grown  only  since  that  strange,  gray  ruin 
was  deserted,  the  foot  of  the  cliff  is  some  three  hundred  feet 
away.  The  lowest  foundation  of  the  castle  is  over  eighty  feet 
above  the  creek ;  and  from  corner-stone  to  crest  the  building 
towers  fifty  feet.  It  is  five  stories  tall,  over  sixty  feet  front 
in  its  widest  part,  and  built  in  the  form  of  a  crescent.  It 
contains  twenty-five  rooms  of  masonry  5  and  there  are,  be- 
sides, many  cave-chambers  below  and  at  each  side  of  it — 
small  natural  grottos  neatly  walled  in  front  and  with  wee 
doors  The  timbers  of  the  castle  are  still  in  excellent  pre- 
servation,— a  durability  impossible  to  wood  in  any  other  cli- 
mate,— and  some  still  bear  the  clear  marks  of  the  stone  axes 
with  which  they  were  cut.  The  rafter-ends  outside  the  walls 
were  "  trimmed  "  by  burning  them  off  close.  The  roofs  and 
floors  of  reed  thatch  and  adobe  mud  are  still  perfect  except 
in  two  or  three  rooms ;  and  traces  of  the  last  hearth-fire  that 
cooked  the  last  meal,  dim  centuries  ago,  are  still  there.  In- 
deed, there  are  even  a  few  relics  of  the  meal  itself — corn, 
dried  cactus-pulp,  and  the  like. 

The  fifth  story  is  nowhere  visible  from  below,  since  it 
stands  far  back  upon  the  roof  of  the  fourth  and  under  the 


138   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

hanging  rock.  In  front  it  has  a  spacious  veranda,  formed 
by  the  roof  of  the  fourth  story,  and  protected  by  a  parapet 
which  the  picture  shows  with  its  central  gateway  to  which  a 
ladder  once  gave  access.  It  is  only  the  upper  story  which 
can  be  reached  by  an  outside  ladder — ah1  the  others  were 
accessible  only  through  tiny  hatchways  in  the  roofs  of  those 
below.  So  deep  is  the  great  uptilted  bowl  in  which  the  castle 
stands,  so  overhanging  the  wild  brow  of  cliff  above,  that 
the  sun  has  never  shone  upon  the  two  topmost  stories. 

There  is  but  one  way  to  get  to  the  castle,  and  that  is  by 
the  horizontal  ledges  below.  These  rise  one  above  the  other 
(like  a  series  of  shelves,  not  like  steps),  ten  to  fourteen  feet 
apart,  and  fairly  overhang.  The  aborigines  had  first  to  build 
strong  ladders,  and  lay  them  from  ledge  to  ledge ;  and  then 
up  that  dizzy  footing  they  carried  upon  their  backs  the  un- 
counted tons  of  stones  and  mortar  and  timbers  to  build  that 
great  edifice.  What  do  you  imagine  an  American  architect 
would  say,  if  called  upon  to  plan  for  a  stone  mansion  in  such 
a  place  ?  The  original  ladders  have  long  ago  disappeared ; 
and  so  have  the  modern  ones  once  put  there  by  a  scientist  at 
the  fort.  I  had  to  climb  to  the  castle  by  a  crazy  little  frame 
of  sycamore  branches,  dragging  it  after  me  from  ledge  to 
ledge,  and  sometimes  lashing  it  to  knobs  of  rock  to  keep  it 
from  tumbling  backward  down  the  cliff.  It  was  a  very 
ticklish  ascent,  and  gave  full  understanding  how  able  were 
the  builders,  and  how  secure  they  were  when  they  had  re- 
treated to  this  high-perched  fortress  and  pulled  up  their  lad- 
ders— as  they  undoubtedly  did  every  night.  A  monkey 


"MONTEZUMA'S  CASTLE,"  FROM  THE  FOOT  OF  THE  CLIFF. 


MONTEZUMA'S  CASTLE.  141 

could  not  scale  the  rock ;  and  the  cliff  perfectly  protects  the 
castle  above  and  on  each  side.  Nothing  short  of  modern 
weapons  could  possibly  affect  this  lofty  citadel. 

Down  in  the  valley  at  its  feet — as  below  Montezuma's 
Well  and  the  hundreds  of  other  prehistoric  dwellings  in  the 
canon  of  Beaver — are  still  traces  of  the  little  fields  and  of 
the  acequias  *  that  watered  them.  Even  in  those  far  days  the 
Pueblos  were  patient,  industrious,  home-loving  farmers,  but 
harassed  eternally  by  wily  and  merciless  savages — a  fact 
which  we  have  to  thank  for  the  noblest  monuments  in  our 
new-old  land. 

*  The  characteristic  irrigating-ditches  of  the  southwest. 


XII. 

THE  GREATEST  NATURAL  BRIDGE  ON  EARTH. 

{OU  all  know  of  the  Natural  Bridge  in  Virginia, 
and  perhaps  have  heard  how  the  first  and  great- 
est president  of  the  United  States,  in  the  ath- 
letic vigor  of  his  youth,  climbed  and  carved  his 
name  high  on  its  cliff.  A  very  handsome  and 
picturesque  spot  it  is,  too  j  but  if  a  score  of  it  were  thrown 
together  side  by  side,  they  would  not  begin  to  make  one  of 
the  Natural  Bridge  of  which  I  am  going  to  tell  you — one  in 
the  western  edge  of  the  Tonto  Basin,  Arizona,  in  the  same 
general  region  as  Montezuma's  Well  and  Castle,  but  even 
less  known  than  they. 

The  Natural  Bridge  of  Pine  Creek,  Arizona,  is  to  the  world's 
natural  bridges  what  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado  is  to 
the  world's  chasms — the  greatest,  the  grandest,  the  most  be- 
wildering. It  is  truly  entitled  to  rank  with  the  great  natural 
wonders  of  the  earth — as  its  baby  brother  in  Virginia  is  not. 
Its  grandeur  is  equally  indescribable  by  artist  and  by  writer 
— its  vastness,  and  the  peculiarities  of  its  "architecture," 
make  it  one  of  the  most  difficult  objects  at  which  camera 
was  ever  leveled.  No  photograph  can  give  more  than  a  hint 


THE  GREATEST  NATURAL  BRIDGE  ON  EARTH.      143 

of  its  appalling  majesty,  no  combination  of  photographs 
more  than  hints.  There  are  photographs  which  do  approxi- 
mate justice  to  bits  of  the  Grand  Canon,  the  Yosemite,  the 
Yellowstone,  the  Redwoods,  Niagara  * ;  there  never  will  be 
of  the  Natural  Bridge  of  Arizona — for  reasons  which  you 
will  understand  later.  But  perhaps  with  words  and  pictures 
I  can  say  enough  to  lead  you  some  time  to  see  for  yourself 
this  marvelous  spot. 

From  Camp  Verde  the  Natural  Bridge  lies  a  long,  hard 
day's  ride  to  the  southeast.  There  is  a  government  road — a 
very  good  one  for  that  rough  country — to  Pine,  so  one  may 
go  by  wagon  all  but  five  miles  of  the  way.  This  road  is  fif- 
teen miles  longer  to  Pine  than  the  rough  and  indistinct  mail- 
trail  of  thirty-eight  miles,  which  a  stranger  should  not  at- 
tempt to  follow  without  a  guide,  and  a  weak  traveler  should 
not  think  of  at  all.  About  midway,  this  trail  crosses  the  tre- 
mendous gorge  of  Fossil  Creek — down  and  up  pitches  that 
try  the  best  legs  and  lungs — and  here  is  a  very  interesting 
spot.  In  the  north  side  of  Fossil  Creek  Canon,  close  to  the 
trail  and  in  plain  sight  from  it,  are  lonely  little  cave-houses 
that  look  down  the  sheer  cliffs  to  the  still  pools  below.  Sev- 
eral miles  down-stream  there  is  a  fort-house,  also.  Where 
the  trail  crosses  the  canon  there  is  no  running  water  except 
in  the  rainy  season;  but  a  few  hundred  yards  further  down 
are  the  great  springs.  Like  hundreds  of  other  springs  in  the 
west,  they  are  so  impregnated  with  mineral  that  they  are 

*  Whose  majestic  Indian  name,  Nee-ah-gdh-rah,  is  quite  lost  in  our 
flat  corruption  Nigli-dgg-ara. 


144   SOME  STEANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

constantly  building  great  round  basins  for  themselves,  and 
for  a  long  distance  flow  down  over  bowl  after  bowl.  But 
unlike  other  springs,  those  of  Fossil  Creek  build  their  basins 
of  what  seems  crude  Mexican  onyx.  The  fact  that  these 
waters  quickly  coat  twigs  or  other  articles  with  layers  of  this 
beautiful  mineral  gives  rise  to  the  name  of  Fossil — almost 
as  odd  a  misnomer  as  has  the  "  Petrified  Spring  "  of  which  a 
New  Mexico  lady  talks. 

Passing  through  lonely  Strawberry  Valley,  with  its  log 
farm-houses  among  prehistoric  ruins,  one  comes  presently 
over  the  last  divide  into  the  extreme  western  edge  of  the 
Tonto  Basin,  and  down  a  steep  canon  to  the  stiff  little  Mor- 
mon settlement  of  Pine,  on  the  dry  creek  of  the  same  name. 
From  there  to  the  Natural  Bridge — five  miles  down-stream 
— there  is  no  road  at  all,  and  the  trail  is  very  rough.  But 
its  reward  waits  at  the  end.  Leaving  the  creek  altogether 
and  taking  to  the  hills,  we  wind  among  the  giant  pines,  then 
across  a  wild,  lava-strewn  mesa,  and  suddenly  come  upon 
the  brink  of  a  striking  canon  fifteen  hundred  feet  deep.  Its 
west  wall  is  an  unspeakably  savage  jumble  of  red  granite 
crags ;  the  east  side  a  wooded,  but  in  most  places  impassably 
steep  bluff.  The  creek  has  split  through  the  ruddy  granite 
to  our  right  a  wild,  narrow  portal,  below  which  widens  an 
almost  circular  little  valley,  half  a  mile  across.  Below  this 
the  canon  pinches  again,  and  winds  away  by  grim  gorges  to 
where  the  blue  Mazatzals  bar  the  horizon. 

In  the  wee  oasis  at  our  feet  there  is  as  yet  no  sign  of  a 
natural  bridge,  nor  of  any  other  colossal  wonder.  There  is 


LOOKING   THROUGH   THE    SOUTH   ARCH   OF   THE   GREATEST   NATURAL   BRIDGE. 

13 


THE  GREATEST  NATURAL  BRIDGE  ON  EARTH.      147 

a  clearing  amid  the  dense  chaparral — a  clearing  with  tiny 
house  and  barn,  and  rows  of  fruit  trees,  and  fields  of  corn 
and  alfalfa.  They  are  thirteen  hundred  feet  below  us. 
Clambering  down  the  steep  and  sinuous  trail,  among  the 
chapparo  and  the  huge  flowering  columns  of  the  maguey,  we 
come  quite  out  of  breath  to  the  little  cottage  It  is  a  lovely 
spot,  bowered  in  vines  and  flowers,  with  pretty  walks  and 
arbors  by  which  ripples  the  clear  brook  from  a  big  spring  at 
the  very  door.  A  straight,  thick-chested  man,  with  twinkling 
eyes  and  long  gray  hair,  is  making  sham  battle  with  a  big 
rooster,  while  a  cat  blinks  at  them  from  the  bunk  on  the 
porch.  These  are  the  only  inhabitants  of  this  enchanted 
valley — old  "  Dave  "  Go  wan,  the  hermit,  and  his  two  mateless 
pets.  A  quaint,  sincere,  large-hearted  old  man  is  he  who  has 
wrought  this  little  paradise  from  utter  wilderness  by  force  of 
the  ax.  Only  those  who  have  had  it  to  dp  can  faintly  con- 
ceive the  fearful  toil  of  clearing  off  these  semi-tropic  jungles. 
But  the  result  gives  the  hermit  just  pride.  His  homestead 
of  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  contains  a  f armlet  which  is 
not  only  as  pretty  as  may  be  found,  but  unique  in  the  whole 
world. 

It  is  well  to  have  this  capable  guide,  for  there  is  nowhere 
an  equal  area  wherein  a  guide  is  more  necessary.  Think 
of  Gowan  himself,  familiar  for  years  with  his  strange  farm, 
being  lost  for  three  days  within  a  hundred  yards  of  his  house. 
That  sounds  strange,  but  it  is  true. 

The  old  Scotchman  is  very  taciturn  at  first,  like  all  who 
have  really  learned  the  lessons  of  out-of-doors,  but  promptly 


148   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

accedes  to  a  request  to  be  shown  his  bridge.  He  leads  the 
way  out  under  his  little  bower  of  clematis,  down  the  terraced 
vineyard,  along  the  corn-field,  and  into  the  pretty  young  or- 
chard of  peach  and  apricot.  Still  no  token  of  what  we  seek  j 
and  we  begin  to  wonder  if  a  bridge  so  easily  hidden  can  be 
so  very  big  after  all.  There  is  even  no  sign  of  a  stream. 

And  on  a  sudden,  between  the  very  trees,  we  stand  over  a 
little  water- worn  hole  and  peer  down  into  space.  We  are  on 
the  bridge  now  !  The  orchard  is  on  the  bridge  I  Do  you  know 
of  any  other  fruit-trees  that  grow  in  so  strange  a  garden  ? 
Of  any  other  two-storied  farm  ?  The  rock  of  the  bridge  is 
at  this  one  point  less  than  ten  feet  thick ;  and  this  odd  little 
two-foot  peep-hole,  like  a  broken  plank  in  the  giant  floor, 
was  cut  through  by  water. 

"  Wait,'7  chuckles  the  hermit,  his  eyes  twinkling  at  our 
wonder  j  "  wait !  "  And  he  leads  us  a  few  rods  onward,  till 
we  stand  beside  an  old  juniper  on  the  very  brink  of  a  terrific 
gorge.  We  are  upon  the  South  Arch  of  the  bridge,  dizzily 
above  the  clear,  noisy  stream,  looking  down  the  savage  canon 
in  whose  wilds  its  silver  thread  is  straightway  lost  to  view. 
The  "floor"  of  the  bridge  here,  as  we  shall  also  find  it  at  the 
North  Arch,  has  broken  back  and  back  toward  its  center,  so 
that  a  bird's-eye  view  shows  at  each  side  of  the  bridge  a  hori- 
zontal arch.  A  ground  plan  of  the  valley  would  look  some- 
thing like  the  sketch  on  the  opposite  page. 

Circling  south  along  the  southeast  "  pier,"  we  start  down  a 
rugged,  difficult,  and  at  times  dangerous  trail.  A  projecting 
crag  of  the  pier — destined  to  be  a  great  obstacle,  later,  in 


THE  GREATEST   NATURAL  BRIDGE  ON  EARTH.      149 

our  photographic  attempts — shuts  the  bridge  from  view  till 
we  near  the  bottom  of  the  gorge,  and  then  it  bursts  upon  us 
in  sudden  wonder.  The  hand  of  man  never  reared  such  an 
arch,  nor  ever  shall  rear,  as  the  patient  springs  have  gnawed 
here  from  eternal  rock.  Dark  and  stern,  and  fairly  crushing 


ROUGH   GROUND-PLAN  OF   GOWAN*S   VALLEY.      THE  WHOLE   IRREGULAR   CIRCLE   IS  THE 
NEARLY    LEVEL   LIMESTONE    BENCH   WHICH   IS   OCCUPIED    BY   THE    FARM. 


in  its  immensity,  towers  that  terrific  arch  of  rounded  lime- 
stone. The  gorge  is  wild  beyond  telling,  choked  with  giant 
boulders  and  somber  evergreens  and  bristling  cacti  until  it 
comes  to  the  very  jaws  of  that  grim  gateway,  and  there  even 
vegetation  seems  to  shrink  back  in  awe.  Now  one  begins  to 


150   SOME  STRANGE  COENERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

appreciate  the  magnitude  of  the  bridge,  a  part  of  whose  top 
holds  a  five-acre  orchard.  In  its  eternal  shadow  is  room  for 
an  army. 

The  South  Arch,  to  which  we  have  thus  come,  is  the  larger 
and  in  some  respects  the  more  imposing.  From  its  top  to 
the  surface  of  the  water  is  two  hundred  feet,  and  the  pools 
are  very  deep.  The  span  of  the  archway  is  over  two  hundred 
feet  as  we  see  it  now  from  without  j  but  we  shall  soon  find 
it  to  be  really  very  much  greater.  The  groined  limestone  is 
smoothly  rounded;  and  the  fanciful  waters  seem  to  have 
had  architectural  training — for  the  roof  is  wonderfully 
rounded  into  three  stupendous  domes,  each  flanked  by  noble 
flying  buttresses  of  startling  symmetry.  A  photograph  of 
that  three-domed  roof  would  be  a  treasure ;  but  it  is  among 
the  many  impossibilities  of  this  baffling  place. 

Climbing  up  the  water- worn  bed-rock  into  the  cool  dusk  of 
the  bridge — for  the  sun  has  never  seen  one-tenth  of  the  way 
through  this  vast  tunnel — we  stand  under  the  first  dome. 
Away  up  to  our  left,  on  the  west  side  of  the  stream,  there  is 
a  shelf  at  the  top  of  an  impressive  wall ;  and  mounting  by 
ledges  and  a  tall  ladder,  we  find  this  little  shelf  to  be  an  enor- 
mous level  floor,  running  back  three  hundred  feet  west.  Here, 
then,  we  see  the  extreme  span  of  the  bridge,  over  five  hundred 
feet  j  and  here  we  find  the  central  pier — a  stupendous  column 
from  this  floor  to  the  vaulted  roof,  a  column  more  than  one 
hundred  feet  in  circumference.  How  strange  that  the  blind 
waters  which  ate  out  all  the  rest  of  this  vast  chamber  should 
have  left  that  one  necessary  pillar  to  support  the  roof ! 


ANOTHER   VIEW  OF  THE  GREAT   BRIDGE. 


THE   GREATEST   NATURAL   BRIDGE   ON   EARTH.      153 

About  midway  of  the  stream's  course  under  the  bridge  is 
the  Great  Basin — a  pool  which  would  be  a  wonder  anywhere. 
It  is  a  solid  rock  bowl,  some  seventy-five  feet  in  diameter  and 
ninety  in  depth  j  and  so  transparent  that  a  white  stone  rolled 
down  the  strange  natural  trough  over  one  hundred  feet  long 
in  the  side  of  the  basin  can  be  seen  in  all  its  bubbling  course 
to  the  far  bottom  of  that  chilly  pool.  Fifty  of  the  beautiful 
"  Basin  w  in  the  Franconia  Notch  would  not  make  one  of  this  j 
and  the  noble  "Pool"  itself,  in  the  same  mountain  para- 
dise, does  not  match  it.  The  clear  stream  pours  into  this 
basin  in  a  white  fall  of  thirty  feet  j  but,  dwarfed  by  its  giant 
company,  the  fall  seems  petty. 

The  North  Arch — to  which  we  may  come  under  the  bridge 
by  a  ticklish  climb  around  the  Great  Basin — is  less  regular 
but  not  less  picturesque  than  the  South  Arch.  It  is  more 
rugged  in  contour,  and  its  buttresses,  instead  of  being 
smooth,  are  wrought  in  fantastic  figures,  while  strange  sta- 
lactites fringe  its  top  and  sides. 

And  now  for  the  comparative  magnitude  of  this  greatest 
of  natural  bridges.  Its  actual  span  is  over  five  hundred  feet 
— that  is,  about  five  times  the  span  of  the  Virginia  Bridge. 
Its  height  from  floor  of  bridge  to  surface  of  water  is  forty 
feet  less  than  its  small  brother's  j  but  to  the  bottom  of 
erosion — the  proper  measurement,  of  course — it  is  fifty 
feet  greater.  But  in  its  breadth — that  is,  measurement  up 
and  down  stream — it  is  over  six  hundred  feet,  or  more  than 
twelve  times  as  wide  as  the  Virginia  Bridge !  So  you  see 
one  could  carve,  from  this  almost  unknown  wonder,  some- 


154   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

thing  like  sixty  bridges,  each  equal  to  the  greatest  curiosity 
of  Virginia ! 

In  these  vast  proportions  lies  the  impossibility  of  ade- 
quately photographing  this  bridge.  There  is  no  point  from 
which  the  eye  can  take  it  in  at  once.  It  is  a  wonder-book  which 
must  be  turned  leaf  by  leaf.  Miles  of  walking  are  necessary 
before  one  really  understands.  From  the  bed  of  the  stream 
half  the  dignity  of  the  arch  is  lost  behind  the  boulders,  if  one 
gets  off  far  enough  to  command  the  opening  at  a  glance.  If 
near  enough  for  an  unobstructed  view,  then  the  vast  arch  so 
overshadows  us  that  neither  eye  nor  lens  can  grasp  it  all. 
And  the  wing-cliff  which  projects  from  the  southeast  pier— 
as  you  may  see  in  the  chief  picture  of  the  South  Arch— 
makes  it  almost  impossible  to  find  a  point,  at  sufficient  dis- 
tance for  photographing,  whence  one  can  see  clear  through 
the  bridge.  "  Can't  be  done ! "  reiterated  the  old  hermit. 
"Been  lots  of  professionals  here  from  Phosnix  with  their 
machines,  and  all  they  could  get  was  pictures  that  look  like 
caves.  You  can't  show  through  with  a  picture,  to  prove  it 's 
a  Imdgej  at  all !  " 

But  it  can  be  done ;  and  being  bound  to  show  you  all  that 
photography  can  possibly  show  of  this  wonder,  I  did  it.  It 
cost  about  twenty-four  solid  hours  of  painful  and  perilous 
climbing  and  reconnoissance,  a  good  deal  of  blood-tribute 
to  sharp  rocks  and  savage  cactus  — to  whose  inhospitable 
thorns  it  was  necessary  to  cling  to  get  footing  on  some  of 
those  precipices — and  the  camera  did  its  work  from  some  of 
the  dizziest  perches  that  tripod  ever  had;  but  here  are  the 


THE  GREATEST  NATURAL  BRIDGE  ON  EARTH.      155 

pictures  which  do  "  show  through  that  it 's  a  bridge."  When 
you  look  at  the  little  far  circle  of  light,  and  realize  that  it  is 
two  hundred  feet  in  diameter,  you  will  begin  to  feel  the 
distance  from  South  Arch  to  North  Arch  under  that  terrific 
rock  roof. 

Following  up  the  wild  bottom  of  the  canon  from  the  North 
Arch,  around  gigantic  boulders  and  under  hanging  cliffs,  we 
find  many  other  interesting  things.  Directly  we  come  to 
"  The  First  Tree  " —  one  of  the  very  largest  sycamores  in  the 
United  States.  The  canon  here  is  strangely  picturesque. 
Its  west  wall  is  fifteen  hundred  feet  high,  a  wilderness  of 
splintered  red  granite,  not  perpendicular,  but  absolutely  un- 
scalable. The  east  wall  is  of  gray  limestone,  perpendicular, 
often  overhanging,  but  nowhere  over  two  hundred  feet  high. 
Gowan's  farm  comes  to  the  very  trees  that  lean  over  its 
brink,  and  he  now  shows  us  the  "  lower  story  "  of  his  unique 
homestead.  Not  only  does  his  orchard  stand  two  hundred 
feet  in  air,  with  room  beneath  for  some  of  the  largest  build- 
ings in  America,  but  the  rest  of  his  farm  is  as  "  up-stairs," 
though  in  a  different  way.  This  fantastic  east  wall  of  the 
canon  is  fairly  honeycombed  with  caves,  whose  ghostly  cham- 
bers, peopled  with  white  visions  in  stone,  run  back  un- 
known miles.  His  whole  farm,  his  very  house,  is  undermined 
by  them.  The  old  hermit  has  made  many  journeys  of  ex- 
ploration in  these  caves,  but  has  merely  learned  the  begin- 
ning of  their  labyrinth.  It  was  in  one  of  these  subterranean 
tours  that  he  was  lost.  His  torches  gave  out,  food  he  had 
none,  and  for  three  days  he  faced  a  frightful  death —  their, 


156   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

close  to  his  own  cottage,  perhaps  not  a  hundred  feet  from  it. 
From  several  of  these  caves  issue  fine  rivulets,  that  coat  with 
limestone  whatever  comes  in  their  way.  Some  time  ago 
Gowan's  pet  pig  fell  off  the  edge  of  the  up-stairs  farm,  and 
there  it  lies  to-day  in  a  clear  pool,  pink- white  as  the  freshest 
pork,  but  fast  turning  into  the  most  durable.  It  is  an  odd 
fact  that  Pine  Creek  as  a  visible  stream  starts  at  and  depends 
upon  Gowan's  farm.  It  is  nominally  Pine  Creek  for  ten 
miles  above,  but  is  only  a  dry  wash,  except  in  time  of  rains  j 
but  the  strong,  clear  stream  which  pours  from  under  the 
South  Arch  of  the  bridge  is  large  and  permanent. 

How  was  the  bridge  built  ?  By  the  same  peerless  architect 
that  builded  the  greatest  wonders  of  the  earth — the  architect 
of  the  Grand  Canon  and  the  Yellowstone,  and  the  Yosemite 
— by  Water.  It  seems  probable  that  Gowan's  little  round 
valley  was  once  a  lake,  dammed  by  ledges  at  the  south  end 
which  have  since  disappeared.  The  rich  alluvial  soil  found 
only  here  would  indicate  that.  At  all  events,  here  was  once 
a  great  round  blanket  of  limestone,  many  hundred  feet  thick, 
laid  down  flat  upon  the  giant  lap  of  the  granite.  From  un- 
known storage-caverns  of  the  Mogollon  watershed  subterra- 
nean passages  led  hither,  and  through  them  flowed  strong 
springs.  In  time  the  water — whether  stored  in  a  lake  upon 
this  limestone  bench,  or  merely  flowing  over — began  to  bur- 
row "  short  cuts  "  through  it,  as  water  always  will  in  lime- 
rock.  As  the  west  side  of  the  valley  was  lowest,  there  toiled 
the  greatest  throng  of  water- workmen.  Perhaps  it  was  a 
little  fellow  no  bigger  than  your  fist  who  first  made  passage 


THE  GREATEST  NATURAL  BRIDGE  ON  EARTH.      159 

for  himself  through  what  is  now  the  Natural  Bridge.  And 
he  called  his  brother  waters,  and  they  crowded  in  after  him  j 
and  each  as  he  passed  gnawed  with  his  soft  but  tireless  teeth 
at  the  stone,  and  carried  his  mouthful  of  lime-dust  off  down 
the  valley,  chuckling  as  he  ran.  And  slowly  so  the  tunnel 
grew.  If  men  were  there  then,  the  life  of  generations  would 
have  seen  no  change ;  but  time  is  the  most  abundant  thing 
in  creation  (except  for  us) ;  and  time  was  there,  and  now  the 
dark  winding  burrow  of  a  rivulet  has  become  one  of  the 
noblest  passage-ways  on  earth.  The  hermit  who  owns  it  was 
born  in  Scotland,  but  has  grown  American  in  every  fiber. 
He  refuses  to  make  a  mercenary  income  from  his  wonder- 
land. It  is  free  for  all  to  see — and  his  kindly  help  with  it. 
He  wants  to  dedicate  his  homestead  to  the  government,  and 
to  have  it  accepted,  made  accessible,  and  cared  for  as  a  na- 
tional park — as  it  is  most  worthy  to  be. 

I  often  wonder  if  there  were  not  great  poets  among  the 
Indians  of  the  old  days.  Indeed,  I  am  sure  there  must  have 
been  in  the  race  which  invented  the  poetry  of  the  folk-lore 
I  have  gathered  among  them.  And  when  one  sees  amid 
what  noblest  works  of  Nature  they  lived  in  those  days,  one 
may  well  believe  that  bronze  Homers  are  buried  in  that 
buried  past.  Science  has  at  last  learned  that  there  can  be 
no  real  study  of  history  without  consideration  of  physical 
geography  as  its  chief  factor.  A  race  grows  into  character 
according  to  the  country  it  inhabits ;  and  the  utmost  savage 
would  grow  (in  centuries)  to  be  a  different  man  when  he  had 
removed  from  the  dull  plains  to  the  Grand  Canon,  the  San 


160   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

Juan,  Acoma,  the  Verde  cliffs,  the  Tonto  Basin,  or  any  other 
spot  where  the  Pueblos  lived  five  hundred  years  ago.  For 
here  at  the  bridge  they  were,  too.  They  tilled  Gowan's  two- 
story  farm,  and  dwelt  in  the  caves  of  his  basement,  perhaps 
while  his  ancestors  were  yet  naked  savages  in  old  Scotia. 
Their  rude  implements  and  fabrics  are  everywhere;  and 
among  many  valuable  relics  from  that  region  I  brought 
home  a  fetich*  which  is  quite  priceless — a  symbol  of  the 
eagle  holding  a  rattlesnake  in  his  talons,  carved  from  an  un- 
known stone  which  baffles  the  file.  Fancy  the  Pueblo  boys 
and  girls  of  the  Dark  Ages  with  those  giant  domes  of  the 
Natural  Bridge  for  a  roof  to  their  play-ground,  the  Great 
Basin  for  a  "  swimming-hole,"  and  miles  of  stalactite  caves 
to  play  hide-and-seek  in ! 

There  are  countless  minor  natural  bridges  in  the  south- 
west, including  a  very  noble  one  in  the  labyrinthine  cliffs  of 
Acoma.  There  is  a  curious  natural  bridge  near  Fort  Defi- 
ance, N.  M.  It  has  an  arch  of  only  about  sixty  feet,  but  is 
remarkable  because  it  was  carved  not  by  water  but  by  sand- 
laden  winds,  as  are  some  of  the  most  beautiful  and  fantastic 
erosions  of  the  dry  southwest. 

*  Hot  an  idol,  but  the  sacred  symbol  of  some  divine  Power. 


ThicKness 

THE   EAGLE   FETICH,  ACTUAL  SIZE. 


'"'"''  ''/f*"'''"'' 


*§ 


-   •'  ' 


' 


ri« 


. 


SOME   LEAVES   FROM   THE   STONE   AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 


XIII. 

THE  STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 

AM  not  so  sure  about  the  present  generation — 
for  these  years  on  the  frontier  have  given  me 
little  chance  to  know  the  new  boys  as  well  as 
an  oldish  boy  would  like  to — but  with  most 
young  Americans  of  my  day  the  autograph- 
album  was  a  cherished  institution.  It  was  a  very  pretty 
habit,  too,  and  a  wise  one,  thus  to  press  a  flower  from  each 
young  friendship.  Not  that  the  autographs  were  always  wise 
— how  well  I  remember  the  boys  who  "  tried  to  be  funny ," 
and  the  girls  who  were  dolefully  sentimental,  and  the  bud- 
ding geniuses  who  tottered  under  thoughts  palpably  too 
heavy  for  the  unformed  handwriting,  in  the  thumbed  red 
morocco  books  of  twenty  years  ago !  But  the  older  those 
grimy  albums  grow,  the  more  fully  I  feel  that  they  were 
worth  while,  and  that  it  is  a  pity  we  do  not  keep  more  of 
the  boy  "  greenness  "  into  the  later  years ;  for  there  are  more 
plants  than  the  inanimate  ones  whose  life  is  dearest  and 
most  fragrant  while  they  are  green. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  supreme  moments  when  the  good 
gray  Longfellow  and  cheerful,  rheumatic  "  Mrs.  Partington  " 


164   SOME  STRANGE  COENEES  OF  OUE  COUNTEY. 

christened  my  last  autograph-album  with  their  names,  which 
were  for  a  long  time  my  chief est  treasures — until  that  dear- 
est hero  of  boyhood,  Captain  Mayne  Reid,  eclipsed  them  all. 
That  seems  very  far  back ;  but  the  crowded  years  between, 
with  all  their  adventures  and  dangers,  have  brought  no 
keener  joys.  And  last  summer  the  boyish  triumph  came 
back  clear  and  strong  as  ever,  when  I  stood  under  one  of  the 
noblest  cliffs  in  America  and  read  in  its  vast  stone  pages  the 
autographs  of  some  of  the  great  first  heroes  of  the  New 
World. 

"The  Stone  Autograph- Album "  lies  in  a  remote  and  al- 
most unknown  corner  of  western  New  Mexico.  It  is  fifty 
miles  southwest  of  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Railroad  from 
Grant's  Station,  and  can  be  reached  only  by  long  drives 
through  lonely  but  picturesque  canons  and  great  pine  forests. 
It  is  but  four  miles  from  the  half-dozen  Mexican  houses  of 
Las  Tinajas,  where  the  traveler  can  find  food  and  shelter. 
The  journey  from  the  railroad  is  not  dangerous,  and  need 
not  be  uncomfortable ;  but  one  should  be  careful  to  secure 
good  horses  and  a  guide,  for  the  roads  are  not  like  those  of 
the  East. 

Climbing  and  descending  the  long  slopes  of  the  Zuni  range, 
we  emerge  at  last  from  the  forest  to  a  great  plateau,  its 
southeastern  rim  crowded  with  extinct  volcanoes,  whose  som- 
ber cones  explain  the  grim,  black  leagues  of  lava-flows  that 
stretch  everywhere.  To  the  southwest  the  plateau  dips  into 
a  handsome  valley,  guarded  on  the  north  by  the  wilderness 
of  pines,  and  on  the  south  by  a  long  line  of  those  superb 


THE   STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM.  165 

mesas  of  many-colored  sandstone  which  are  among  the  char- 
acteristic beauties  of  the  southwest.  Through  this  valley  ran 
an  ancient  and  historic  road — now  hard  to  trace,  for  so 
many  generations  has  it  been  abandoned — from  Zuni  to  the 
Rio  Grande.  Many  of  you  have  already  heard  something  of 
Zuni,  that  strange  gray  pyramid  of  the  adobe  homes  of  fifteen 
hundred  Pueblo  Indians.  It  is  what  is  left  of  the  famous 
"  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola,"  whose  fabled  gold  inspired  the  dis- 
covery of  New  Mexico  in  1539,  and  afterward  the  most  mar- 
velous marches  of  exploration  ever  made  on  this  continent. 
Coronado,  that  greatest  explorer,  and  the  first  Caucasian  sol- 
dier who  ever  entered  New  Mexico,  marched  from  the  Gulf 
of  California  almost  to  where  Kansas  City  now  is,  in  1540, 
besides  making  many  other  expeditions  only  less  astounding. 
And  after  his  day,  the  most  of  the  other  Spanish  world-find- 
ers came  first  to  Zuni  and  thence  trudged  on  to  the  Rio 
Grande,  and  to  the  making  of  a  heroic  history  which  is  quite 
without  parallel. 

As  we  move  west  down  the  valley,  the  mesas  grow  taller 
and  more  beautiful;  and  presently  we  become  aware  of  a 
noble  rock  which  seems  to  be  chief  of  all  its  giant  brethren. 
Between  two  juniper-dotted  canons  a  long,  wedged-shaped 
mesa  tapers  to  the  valley,  and  terminates  at  its  edge  in  a 
magnificent  cliff  which  bears  striking  resemblance  to  a  titanic 
castle.  Its  front  soars  aloft  in  an  enormous  tower,  and  its 
sides  are  sheer  walls  two  hundred  and  fifteen  feet  high,  and 
thousands  of  feet  long,  with  strange  white  battlements  and 
wondrous  shadowy  bastions.  Nothing  without  wings  could 


166   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

mount  there ;  but  a  few  hundred  yards  south  of  the  tower 
the  mesa  can  be  scaled — by  a  prehistoric  trail  of  separate 
foot-holes  worn  deep  in  the  solid  rock.  At  the  top,  we  find 
that  the  wedge  is  hollow — a  great  V,  in  fact,  for  a  canon  from 
behind  splits  the  mesa  almost  to  its  apex.  Upon  the  arms  of 
this  V  are  the  ruins  of  two  ancient  pueblos,  which  had  been 
abandoned  before  our  history  began,  facing  each  other  across 
that  fearful  gulf.  These  stones  " cities"  of  the  prehistoric 
Americans  were  over  two  hundred  feet  square  and  four  or 
five  stories  tall — great  terraced  human  beehives,  with  sev- 
eral hundred  inhabitants  each. 

This  remarkable  and  noble  rock  was  known  to  the  Spanish 
pioneers  much  more  than  two  centuries  before  any  of  our 
Saxon  forefathers  penetrated  the  appalling  deserts  of  the 
southwest;  and  even  in  this  land  full  of  wondrous  stone 
monuments  it  was  so  striking  that  they  gave  it  a  name  for 
its  very  own.  They  called  it  El  Morro — the  Castle — and 
for  over  three  hundred  years  it  has  borne  that  appropriate 
title,  though  the  few  hundred  "Americans  n  who  have  seen  it 
know  it  better  as  Inscription  Rock.  It  is  the  most  precious 
cliff,  historically,  possessed  by  any  nation  on  earth,  and,  I 
am  ashamed  to  say,  the  most  utterly  uncared-for. 

Lying  on  the  ancient  road  from  Zuni  to  the  river — and 
about  thirty  miles  from  the  former — it  became  a  most  im- 
portant landmark.  The  necessities  of  the  wilderness  made 
it  a  camping-place  for  all  who  passed,  since  the  weak  spring 
under  the  shadow  of  that  great  rock  was  the  first  water  in  a 
hard  day's  march.  There  was  also  plenty  of  wood  near,  and 


THE  STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM.  167 

a  fair  shelter  under  the  overhanging  precipices.  So  it  was 
that  every  traveler  who  came  to  the  Morro  in  those  grim  cen- 
turies behind  this  stopped  there,  and  that  included  nearly 
every  notable  figure  among  the  first  heroes  who  trod  what  is 
now  our  soil.  And  when  they  stopped,  something  else  hap- 
pened—  something  which  occurred  nowhere  else  in  the 
United  States,  so  far  as  we  know.  The  sandstone  of  the  cliff 
was  fine  and  very  smooth,  and  when  the  supper  of  jerked 
meat  and  popcorn-meal  porridge  had  been  eaten,  and  the 
mailed  sentries  put  out  to  withstand  the  prowling  Apaches, 
the  heroes  wrote  their  autographs  upon  a  vast  perpendicular 
page  of  stone,  with  their  swords  which  had  won  the  New 
World  for  pens ! 

You  must  not  imagine  that  this  came  from  the  trait  which 
gives  ground  for  our  modern  rhyme  about  "  f ools>  names,  like 
their  faces.'7  These  old  Spaniards  were  as  unbraggart  a  set 
of  heroes  as  ever  lived.  It  was  not  for  notoriety  that  they 
wrote  in  that  wonderful  autograph-album,  not  in  vanity,  nor 
idly.  They  were  piercing  an  unknown  and  frightful  wilder- 
ness, in  which  no  civilized  being  dwelt — a  wilderness  which 
remained  until  our  own  times  the  most  dangerous  area  in 
America.  They  were  few — never  was  their  army  over  two 
hundred  men,  and  sometimes  it  was  a  tenth  of  that — amid 
tens  of  thousands  of  warlike  savages.  The  chances  were  a 
hundred  to  one  that  they  would  never  get  back  to  the  world 
— even  to  the  half -savage  world  of  Mexico,  which  they  had 
just  conquered  and  were  Christianizing.  No !  What  they 
wrote  was  rather  like  leaving  a  headstone  for  unknown 


168   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

graves ;  a  word  to  say,  if  any  should  ever  follow,  "  Here  were 
the  men  who  did  not  come  back."  It  was  a  good-by  like 
the  "  Caesar,  we,  who  are  to  die,  salute  you." 

Coronado,  the  first  explorer,  did  not  pass  Inscription  Rock, 
but  took  the  southern  trail  from  Zuni  to  the  wondrous  cliff- 
city  of  Acoma.  But  among  those  who  came  after  him,  the 
road  by  the  Morro  soon  became  the  accepted  thoroughfare 
from  Old  to  New  Mexico ;  and  in  its  mouse-colored  cliffs  we 
can  read  to-day  many  of  the  names  that  were  great  in  the 
early  history  of  America.  Such  queer,  long  names  some  of 
them  are,  and  in  such  a  strange,  ancient  hand- writing !  If 
any  boy  had  some  of  those  real  autographs  on  paper,  they 
would  be  worth  a  small  fortune  j  and  if  I  were  not  so  busy 
an  old  boy,  I  would  trace  some  of  them  in  one  of  my  old 
autograph-albums,  exactly  as  they  are  written  in  that  lonely 
rock.  But  as  it  is,  you  shall  have  the  photographic  fac- 
similes which  I  made  purposely  for  you,  and  do  with  them 
what  you  like. 

On  the  southeast  wall  of  the  Morro  are  some  very  hand- 
some autographs,  and  some  very  important  ones.  The  pio- 
neers who  passed  in  the  winter  generally  camped  under  this 
cliff  to  get  the  sun's  warmth,  while  those  who  came  in  sum- 
mer sought  the  eternal  shade  of  the  north  side.  All  the 
old  inscriptions  are  in  Spanish — and  many  in  very  quaint 
old  Spanish,  of  the  days  when  spelling  was  a  very  elastic 
thing,  and  with  such  remarkable  abbreviations  as  our  own 
forefathers  used  as  many  centuries  ago.  All  around  these 
brave  old  names  which  are  so  precious  to  the  historian — and 


THE  STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM.  169 

to  all  who  admire  heroism — are  Saxon  names  of  the  last  few 
decades.  Alas !  some  of  these  late-comers  have  been  vandals, 
and  have  even  erased  the  names  of  ancient  heroes  to  make  a 
smooth  place  for  their  "John  Jones"  and  "George  Smith." 
That  seems  to  me  an  even  more  wicked  and  wanton  thing 
than  the  chipping  of  historic  statues  for  relics;  and  I  do 
not,  anyhow,  envy  the  man  who  could  write  his  petty  name 
in  that  sacred  roster. 

Near  the  tall,  lone  sentinel  pine  which  stands  by  the  south 
wall  of  the  Morro  is  a  modest  inscription  of  great  interest 
and  value.  It  is  protected  from  the  weather  by  a  little  brow 
of  rock,  and  its  straggling  letters  are  legible  still,  though 
they  have  been  there  for  two  hundred  and  eighty-six  years ! 
It  is  the  autograph  of  that  brave  soldier  and  wise  first  gov- 
ernor in  the  United  States,  Juan  de  Onate.  He  was  the  real 
founder  of  New  Mexico,  since  he  established  its  government 
and  built  its  first  two  towns.  In  1598  he  founded  San  Ga- 
briel de  los  Espanoles,  which  is  the  next  oldest  town  in  our 
country.  St.  Augustine,  Florida,  is  the  oldest,  having  been 
founded  in  1565,  also  by  a  Spaniard.  Next  comes  San  Ga- 
briel, and  third  Santa  Fe,  which  Onate  founded  in  1605. 
But  before  there  was  a  Santa  Fe,  he  had  made  a  march 
even  more  wonderful  than  the  one  which  brought  him  to 
New  Mexico.  In  1604  he  trudged,  at  the  head  of  thirty  men, 
across  the  fearful  trackless  desert  from  San  Gabriel  to  the 
Gulf  of  California,  and  back  again  !  And  on  the  return  from 
that  marvelous  "journey  to  discover  the  South  Sea"  (the 
Pacific)  he  camped  at  the  Morro  and  wrote  in  its  eternal 
15 


170   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

page.  Here  it  is,  just  as  he  wrote  it  two  years  before  our 
Saxon  forefathers  had  built  a  hut  in  America,  even  on  the 
sea-coast — while  he  was  fifteen  hundred  miles  from  the  ocean. 
The  inscriptions  are  nearly  all  of  such  antique  lettering,  and 
so  full  of  abbreviations,  that  I  shall  give  you  the  Spanish 


FIG.    I.      JUAN  DE  ONATE. 

text  in  type  with  an  interlined  translation,  so  that  you  may 
pick  out  the  queerly  written  words  and  get  an  idea  of 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  century  "short-hand."  Onate's 
legend  reads : 

" Paso por  aqui  el  adelantado*  donJua de  Onate  al  desciibn- 

Passed   by    here  the        officer  Don  Juan  de  Onate  to  the   discov- 

mento  de  la  mar  del  sur  d  %6  de  Abril  do.  1605" 

ery     of  the  sea  of  the  South  on  the  16th  of  April,  year  1605. 

This  is  the  oldest  identified  autograph  on  the  Rock  except 
one,  which  is  not  absolutely  certain — that  of  Pedro  Romero ; 
his  date  reads  apparently  17580.  Either  some  one  has  fool- 
ishly added  the  nought — which  is  very  improbable — or  the 
1  is  simply  an  i,  and  the  supposed  7  an  old-fashioned  1. 

*We  have  no  exact  word  for  adelantado.  He  was  the  officer  in 
command  of  a  new  country. 


THE   STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM.  171 

This  is  very  likely.  "And" — y  or  i,  in  Spanish  —  was  often 
written  before  the  year;  and  the  chances  are  that  this  in- 
scription means  "Pedro  Romero  and  1580."  In  that  case, 
Romero  was  one  of  the  eight  companions  with  whom  Fran- 
cisco Sanchez  Chanmscado  made  his  very  remarkable  march 
of  exploration  in  that  year. 

Just  below  Onate's  autograph  is  one  which  some  careless 
explorers  have  made  eighty  years  earlier  than  his.  The  sec- 
ond figure  in  the  date  does  look  like  a  5;  but  no  white  m;m 
had  ever  seen  any  part  of  New  Mexico  in  1526  j  and  the  fig- 
ure is  really  an  old-style  7.  The  autograph  is  that  of  Bas- 
conzelos, and  reads : 

"  Por  aqui  pazo  el  Alferes  Dn  Joseph  de  Payba  Basconzelos  el 

By     here  passed  the  Ensign  Don  Joseph   de    Payba     Basconzelos,  the 

ano  que  trujo  el  Cavildo  del  Reyno  d  su  costa  d  18  de  Febo  de 

year  that  he  brought  the  town-council  of  the  kingdom  (N.  M.)  at  his  own  expense 

1726  anos? 

on  the  18th  of  Feb.,  of  1726  years  (the  year  1736). 

Not  far  away  is  the  pretty  autograph  of  Diego  de  Vargas 
—that  dashing  but  generous  general  who  reconquered  New 
Mexico  after  the  fearful  Pueblo  Indian  rebellion  of  1680.  In 
that  rebellion  twenty-one  gentle  missionaries  and  four  hun- 
dred other  Spaniards  were  massacred  by  the  Indians  in  one 
day,  and  the  survivors  were  driven  back  into  Old  Mexico. 
This  inscription  was  written  when  Vargas  made  his  first 
dash  back  into  New  Mexico — a  prelude  to  the  years  of  terrific 
fighting  of  the  Reconquest.  He  wrote : 

"  Aqui  estaba  el  Gen1.  DM.  Do.  de  Vargas,  quien  conquisto  d 

Here   was    the   General   Don   Diego   de    Vargas,    who    conquered   for 


172       SOME   STRANGE  CORNERS  OF   OUR  COUNTRY. 
nuestra  fianta  Fe  y  d  la  Real  Corona  todo  el  Nuevo  Mexico  d  su 

our  Holy  Faith  and  for  the  Royal  Crown  (of  Spain)  all  the  New  Mexico,  at  his 

cos  ta,  ano  de  1692." 

own  expense  (in  the)  year  of  1693. 

A  little  north  of  Vargas's  valuable  inscription  is  that  (fig- 
ure 2)  of  the  expedition  sent  by  Governor  Francisco  Mar- 
tinez de  Baeza  to  arrange  the  troubles  in  Zuni,  on  the 
urgent  request  of  the  chief  missionary  Fray  Cristobal  de 
Quiros.  It  reads : 

"  Pasamos  por  aqui  el  sargento  mayor,  y  el  capitan  Jua.  de 

We   pass   by   here,  the   lieutenant-colonel,  and   the   Captain   Juan   de 

Arechuleta,  y  el  aiudante  Diego  Martin  Barba,  y  el  Alferes 

Arechuleta,    and    the   lieutenant    Diego    Martin    Barba,    and   the   Ensign 

Agostyn  de  Ynojos,  ano  de  1636." 

Augustin   de    Ynojos,     in    the  year  of  1636. 

Below  this  are  some  ancient  Indian  pictographs.  The  sar~ 
gento  mayor  (literally  "chief  sergeant")  who  is  not  named 


".  .... .;V...  '..,,.,.,:•        :       ;,.;.:. 

FIG.    2.       DIEGO    MARTIN    BARBA   AND    ALFERES   AGOSTYN- 


THE  STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM.  173 

was  probably  brave  Francisco  Gomez.  The  inscription  is 
in  the  handwriting  of  Diego  Martin  Barba,  who  was  the 
official  secretary  of  Governor  Baeza.  In  a  little  cavity  near 
by  is  the  inscription  of  "Juan  Garsya,  1636."  He  was  a 
member  of  the  same  expedition.  The  handsome  autograph 
of  Ynojos  appears  in  several  places  on  the  rock. 

Two  quaint  lines,  in  tiny  but  well-preserved  letters,  recall 
a  pathetic  story.  It  is  that  of  a  poor  common  soldier,  who 
did  not  write  his  year.  But  history  supplies  that. 

"Soy  de  mano  de  Felipe  de  Arellano  a  16  de  Setiembre, 

I  am  from  the  hand  of  Felipe  de  Arellano,  on  the  16th  of  September, 

soldado." 

soldier. 

He  was  one  of  the  Spanish  "  garrison n  of  three  men  left  to 
guard  far-off  Zuni,  and  slain  by  the  Indians  in  the  year  1700. 
Not  far  away  is  the  autograph  of  the  leader  of  the  "  force  "  of 
six  men  who  went  in  1701  from  Santa  Fe  to  Zuni  (itself  a 
desert  march  of  three  hundred  miles)  to  avenge  that  massa- 
cre, the  Captain  Juan  de  Urribarri.  He  left  merely  his  name. 
An  autograph  nearly  obliterated  is  that  of  which  we  can 
still  read  only : 

"Paso por  aqui  Fran0,  de  An  .  .  .  Alma  .  .  ." 

This  was  Francisco  de  Anaia  Almazan,  a  minor  but  heroic 
officer  who  served  successively  under  Governor  Otermin,  the 
great  soldier  Cruzate,  and  the  Reconqueror  Vargas,  and  was 
in  nearly  every  action  of  the  long,  red  years  of  the  Pueblo 
Rebellion.  At  the  time  of  the  great  massacre  in  1680,  he  was 
in  the  pueblo  of  Santa  Clara.  His  three  companions  were 


174   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

butchered  by  the  savages,  and  Almazan  escaped  alone  by 
swimming  the  Rio  Grande.  He  probably  wrote  in  the  album 
of  the  Morro  in  1692,  at  the  same  time  with  De  Vargas.  An- 
other autograph  of  a  member  of  the  same  expedition  is  that 
of  Diego  Lucero  de  Godoy  (figure  3).  He  was  then  a  sar- 
gento  mayor,  a  very  good  and  brave  officer,  who  was  with 
Governor  Otermin  in  the  bloody  siege  of  Santa  Fe  by  the 
Indians,  and  in  that  dire  retreat  when  the  bleeding  Spaniards 
hewed  their  way  through  the  swarming  beleaguers  and  fought 


FIG.    3.       DIEGO    LUCERO    DE   GODOY. 

a  passage  to  El  Paso.  He  was  also  in  nearly  every  battle  of 
the  Reconquest.  Salvador  Holguin,  whose  autograph  is  also 
on  the  rock,  was  another  of  Vargas's  soldiers.  Of  about  the 
same  time  were  several  Naranjos,  of  whom  Joseph  was  the 
first  alcalde  mayor  (about  equivalent  to  district  judge)  of 
Zuni  after  the  Reconquest.  Of  a  much  earlier  date  was  the 
unknown  soldier  "  Juan  Gonzales,  1629  "  (figure  4).  A  subse- 
quent Gonzales  passed  and  wrote  here  seventy-one  years  later, 
in  a  very  peculiar  "  fist "  : 

"Pastpor  aquy  el  ano  1700  yo,  Ph.  Gonzales? 

I  passed  by  here  (in)  the  year  1700,  I,  Felipe  Gonzales. 


THE   STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 


17fi 


FIG.    4.       JUAN    GONZALKS. 

Afirma  as  peculiar  as  that  of  our  own  famous  "puzzler/' 
General  Spinner,  is  appended  to  the  entry  (figure  5) : 

"  A  5  del  mes  de  Junyo  deste  ano  de  1709  paso  por  aguy  para 

On  the  5th  of  the  month  of  June  of  this  year  of  1709  passed  by  here,  bound 

Zuui  Ramon  Paez  Jtirt'do" 

for  Zuni,  Ramon  Paez  Hurtado. 


AEZ   HURTADO. 


176   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

Another  Hurtado  wrote  on  the  other  wall,  in  queer  little 
square  characters  (figure  6) : 

"  El  dia  14  de  Julio  de  1736  pasopor  aqui  el  Gen1  Juan  Paez 

(On)  the  day  14th  of  July  of  1736  passed  by  here  the  General  Juan  Paez 

Hurtado,  Visitador  —  y  en  sn  compania  el  cabo  Joseph  Truxillo." 

Hurtado,  Official  Inspector,  and  in  his  company  the  corporal  Joseph  Truxillo. 

This  one  was  a  son  of  the  great  General  Hurtado  —  the 
bosom  friend  of  Vargas,  repeatedly  lieutenant-governor  of  the 
territory,  and  in  1704  acting  governor.  He  was  afterward 
greatly  persecuted  by  Governors  Cubero  and  Martinez.  The 
son  also  was  a  general,  but  not  so  prominent  as  his  father. 


On  the  north  side  of  the  Morro  are  the  longest  and  most 
elaborate  inscriptions,  the  rock  being  there  more  favorable. 
The  earliest  of  them  are  the  two  long  legends  of  the  then 
governor  of  New  Mexico,  Don  Francisco  Manuel  de  Silva 
Nieto.  They  were  not  written  by  him,  but  by  some  admiring 
officer  in  his  little  force.  A  part  has  been  effaced  by  the 
modem  vandal,  but  enough  remains  to  mark  that  very  notar 
ble  journey.  The  first  says  (figure  7) : 


THE   STONE   AUTOGRAPH- ALBUM.  177 


on 
QLteioj/^puc/5|e   t'^ne  ^tf  ''SuH 

Su  Brflco  Vn^ubhflble  "~\  Su 

^ 


onlbs  Garros  de( 
Co5o^)uesolo  f/  R-S 
De  Ob£TO  6 


FIG.    7.      DON   FRANCISCO   MANUEL  DE   SILVA  NIETO. 

"Aqui  .  .  .  [paso  el  Gober]  nador  Don  Francico  Manuel  de 

Here  passed     the     Governor     Don     Francisco     Manuel    de 

Silva  Nieto  que  lo  ynpudlile  tiene  ya  sujeto  su  Braco  yndubitdble 

Silva  Nieto  that  the  impossible  has  already  (been)  effected  (by)  his  arm  indom- 

y  su  Balor,  con  los  Carros  del  Rei  Nuestro  Senor;  cosa  que  solo 

itable  and  his  valor,  with  the  wagons  of  the  King  Our  Master ;  a  thing  which 

el  Puso  en  este  Efecto,  de  Abgosto  9t      Seiscientos     Beinte     y 

only  he  put  in  this  shape  on  August  9,  (one  thousand)  six  hundred,  twenty  and 

Neuve,  que  .  .  .  d  Cuni  Pas6  y  la  Fe  lleve." 

nine,  that  to  Zuni  I  passed  and  the  Faith  carried. 

What  is  meant  by  Governor  Nieto's  "  carrying  the  faith " 
(that  is,  Christianity)  is  that  on  this  expedition  he  took  along 
the  heroic  priests  who  established  the  mission  of  Zuni,  and 
who  labored  alone  amid  that  savage  flock. 


178   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 


' 


_          ^ 

VOD  0}  5 

<.£    CN  /  ^g • 


§,;  s-|, 
§  I  ^i 
i-*-^ 

<3  C     . . .  V 

^       ^    J 

-J-    — Q 


1s 


' — '    '      ^—-3          •*  •=  r_~    ' 


Nieto's  other  inscription 
(figure  8),  written  on  an- 
other journey,  is  in  a  more 
characteristic  handwriting. 
It  says : 

"  El   Hlustrisimo   Senor   y 

The   most   Illustrious   Sir   and 

Cap.    gen.    de    las   pros,   del 

Captain-General  of  the  provinces  of 

nuebo  Mexco.  Por  el  Rey  nro. 

the  New  Mexico  for  the  King  Our  Mas- 

Sr.  Paso  por  aqul  de  buelta  de 

ter,  passed  by  here  on  the  return  from 

los  pueblos  de  Zuni  d  los  29  de 

the  villages  of  Zuni  on  the  29th  of 

Julio  del  ano  de  1629;  y  los 

July  of  the  year  of  1629  and  them  (the 

puso  en  paz  d  su  pendimto., 

Indians)    ne   put   in   peace  at  their 

pidiendole  su  fabor  como  ba- 

request,  (they)  asking  his  favor  as 

sallos  de  su  mag'1.  Y  de  nuebo 

vassals  of  His  Majesty.    And  anew 

dieron  la  obediencia;  todo  lo 

they  gave  obedience;    all  of  which 

que  Mso  con  el  agasaxe,  selo,  y 

he  did  with  persuasiveness,  zeal  and 

p-nidencia,  como  tan  christian- 

prudence,  like   such   a   most  Chris- 

isiuw  .  .  .  tarn   particular   y 

tian,  such   a   careful   and 

gallardo  soldado  de  inacabable 

gallant        soldier       of  tireless 

y  .  .  .  memoria  .  .  J* 

and  memory    .    .    ," 


THE  STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM.  179 

Another  long  inscription,  not  so  handsomely  written  but 
very  characteristic,  is  that  of  Governor  Martinez,  near  by : 

"  Ano  de  1716  a  los  26  de  Agosto  paso  por  aqui  Don  Feliz 

(In  the)  year  of  1716  on  the  26th  of  August,  passed  by  here  Don  Feliz 

Martinez,  Govern1',  y  Cap11.  Gen1,  de  este  Reyno,  d  la  reduczion 

Martinez,  Governor  and  Captain-General  of  this  Kingdom,  to  the  reduction 

//  nmqia.  de  Moqui;  y  en  su  compania  el  Rdo.  P.  F.  Antonio 

and  conquest  of  Moqui ;  and  in  his  company  the  Reverend  Father  Fray  Antonio 

Camargo,  Custodio  y  JUGS  Eclesiastico." 

Cainargo,  Custodian  and  Judge-Ecclesiastic. 

This  was  an  expedition  to  reclaim  to  Christianity  the  lofty 
cliff-built  pueblos  of  Moqui,  which  had  slain  their  mission- 
aries $  but  it  signally  failed,  and  Martinez  was  recalled  in 
disgrace  from  his  governorship.  He  and  Pedro  Rodriguez 
Cubero  were  the  worst  governors  New  Mexico  ever  had  after 
1680,  and  no  one  was  sorry  for  him.  The  Custodio  was  the 
local  head  of  the  Church  in  New  Mexico.  A  curious  flour- 
ish at  the  end  of  his  autograph  is  the  rulrica  much  affected 
by  writers  of  the  past  centuries.  There  are  many  character- 
istic rulmcas  among  the  names  on  the  Morro. 

The  first  visit  of  a  bishop  to  the  southwest  is  recorded  in  a 
very  clear  inscription,  which  runs : 

"Dia    28    de    Sept.    de    1737    anos    llego   aqui   el  Hlmo. 

(On  the)  day  28th  of  September  of  1737  years,  reached  here  the  most  illus- 

8r.  Dr.  Dn.  Mm.  De  Elizaecochea,  Obpo.  de  Durango,  y  el 

trious  Sir  Doctor  Don  Martin  de  Elizaecochea,  Bishop  of  Durango,  and  (on)  the 

dia  29  paso  d  Zuni." 

day  29th  went  on  to  Zufii. 

New  Mexico  belonged  to  the  bishopric  of  Durango  (Mexico) 
until  1852.  A  companion  autograph  is  that  of  the  "  Bachil- 
ler"  (Bachelor  of  Arts)  Don  Ygnacio  de  Arrasain.  He  was 


180   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

with  the  bishop  on  this  journey — an  arduous  and  dangerous 
journey,  even  a  century  later  than  1737. 

One  of  the  most  puzzling  inscriptions  in  this  precious  au- 
tograph album,  and  a  very  important  one,  is  that  of  the  sol- 
dier Lujan  (figure  9).  It  is  almost  in  hieroglyphics,  and  was 
never  deciphered  until  I  put  it  into  the  hands  of  a  great 


FIG.    9.      LUJAN. 

student  of  ancient  writings — though  after  he  solved  the 
riddle  it  is  clear  enough  to  any  one  who  knows  Spanish.  Its 
violent  abbreviations,  the  curious  capitals  with  the  small  final 
letters  piled  "  overhead,"  and  its  reference  to  a  matter  of  his- 
tory of  which  few  Americans  ever  heard,  combined  to  keep 
it  long  a  mystery.  Reduced  to  long-hand  Spanish,  it  reads : 
"  Se  pasaron  d  23  de  Marzo  de  1632  anos  d  la  benganza  de 

They  passed  on  the  23d  of  March  of  1633  years  to  the  avenging  of  the 

Muerte  del  Padre  Letrado.  Liijan" 

death  of  the  Father  Letrado. 


THE   STONE  AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM.  181 

What  a  romance  and  what  a  tragedy  are  hidden  in  those 
two  lines !  Father  Francisco  Letrado  was  the  first  perma- 
nent missionary  to  the  strange  pyramid-pueblo  of  Zuni.  He 
came  to  New  Mexico  about  1628,  and  was  first  a  missionary 
to  the  Jumanos — the  tattooed  savages  who  lived  in  the  edge 
of  the  great  plains,  east  of  the  Rio  Grande.  In  1629,  you 
will  remember,  the  mission  of  Zuni  was  founded,  and  he  was 
sent  to  that  lone,  far  parish  and  to  his  death.  He  labored 
earnestly  with  his  savage  flock,  but  not  for  long.  In  Febru- 
ary, 1630,  they  mercilessly  slew  him.  Francisco  de  la  Mora 
Ceballos  was  then  Governor  of  New  Mexico,  and  he  sent  this 
expedition  "to  avenge  Father  Letrado's  death/'  under  the 
lead  of  the  maestro  de  campo  (Colonel)  Tomas  de  Albizu. 
Albizu  performed  his  mission  successfully  and  without  blood- 
shed. The  Zunis  had  retreated  to  the  top  of  their  thousand- 
foot  cliff,  the  To-yo-al-la-na,  but  were  induced  to  return 
peaceably  to  their  pueblos.  Lujan  was  a  soldier  of  the  ex- 
pedition. 

There  are  a  great  many  other  old  Spanish  autographs  on 
the  sheer  walls  of  the  Morro  j  but  these  are  the  principal  ones 
so  far  deciphered.  Of  the  American  names  only  two  or  three 
are  of  any  note  at  all.  The  earliest  date  from  1849,  and  are 
those  of  Lieutenant  Simpson  and  his  scientific  companion 
Kern — doubtless  the  first  of  us  to  visit  the  spot.  All  the 
other  Saxon  names  are  very  recent  and  very  unimportant. 

I  am  sure  that  if  any  of  my  readers  had  any  one  of  those 
old  autographs  in  his  album,  he  would  guard  it  jealously; 
and  it  is  a  shame  that  we  are  neglecting  that  noble  stone 
16 


182   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

book  of  the  Morro.  A  few  more  years  and  a  few  more  van- 
dals, and  no  tiling  will  be  left  of  what  now  makes  the  rock 
so  precious.  The  government  should  protect  it,  as  it  would 
be  protected  in  any  other  civilized  land  j  and  when  some  of 
you  get  into  Congress,  I  hope  you  will  look  to  this  and  other 
such  duties.  Otherwise  the  next  generation  will  awake  only 
to  find  that  it  has  lost  a  unique  and  priceless  treasure. 


XIV. 


THE  RIVERS  OP  STONE. 

a  line  were  drawn  from  Lake  Manitoba  to  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  at  Galveston,  approximately 
halving  the  United  States,  and  we  could  get 
these  two  halves  on  a  small  enough  scale  to 
compare  them  side  by  side,  we  should  find 
that  Nature  herself  had  already  made  as  striking  a  division. 
We  should  find  such  a  difference  between  them  as  we  now 
scarcely  realize.  Broadly  speaking,  we  should  discover  the 
eastern  half  to  be  low,  rather  flat,  wooded  and  wet  j  the  western 
half  many  times  as  high  above  sea-level,  extremely  mountain- 
ous, generally  bare,  and  phenomenally  dry.  Its  landscapes  are 
more  brown  than  green,  its  ranges  barren  and  far  more  bris- 
tling than  those  of  the  east ;  and  its  plains  vast  bleak  uplands. 
Its  very  air  is  as  different  from  that  of  the  eastern  half  as 
white  is  different  from  gray.  It  is  many  times  lighter  and 
many  times  clearer,  and  incomparably  drier.  It  is  a  sort  of 
wizard  air,  which  plays  all  sorts  of  good-natured  tricks  upon 
the  stranger.  Delicious  to  breathe,  a  real  tonic  to  the  lungs, 
a  stimulant  to  the  skin,  it  seems  to  delight  in  fooling  the  eyes. 
Through  its  magic  clearness  one  sees  three  times  as  far  as  in 
the  heavier  atmosphere  of  the  east,  and  the  stranger's  esti- 


184   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

mates  of  distance  have  all  to  be  made  over.  It  is  no  uncom- 
mon thing  for  the  traveler  to  deem  an  object  but  five  miles 
off  when  it  is  really  twenty  miles  or  even  more.  And  a  still 
more  startling  trick  of  this  strange  atmosphere  is  that  it  very 
frequently  makes  one  see  things  which  do  not  exist  at  all ! 
It  is  a  curious  paradox  that  this  atmospheric  freak,  of  which 
you  know  as  the  mirage,  is  confined  to  dry  countries — des- 
erts, in  fact — and  that  the  illusion  it  most  commonly  pre- 
sents is  water!  Towns  and  mountains  and  animals  are 
sometimes  pictured,  but  oftenest  it  is  a  counterfeit  of  water 
that  is  shown  the  weary  traveler  in  a  land  where  there  is  no 
water,  and  where  water  means  life. 

The  very  landscape  under  this  wonderful  air  has  an  ap- 
pearance to  be  found  nowhere  else.  Its  barrenness  seems  en- 
chanted ;  and  there  is  an  unearthly  look  about  it  all.  Water- 
courses are  extremely  rare  —  in  a  quarter  of  a  continent 
there  are  only  three  good-sized  rivers,  and  it  is  in  places 
hundreds  of  miles  between  brooks.  In  a  word,  the  country 
seems  to  have  been  burnt  out — it  reminds  one  of  a  gigantic 
cinder. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  in  this  area  a  great  many  rivers  of 
a  sort  not  to  be  found  in  the  East — and  such  strange  rivers ! 
They  are  black  as  coal,  and  full  of  strange,  savage  waves,  and 
curious  curling  eddies,  and  enormous  bubbles.  The  springs 
from  which  they  started  ran  dry  centuries  ago ;  a  mouth  not 
one  of  them  ever  had  j  and  yet  their  black  flood  has  not  been 
soaked  up  by  the  thirsty  sands.  There  lies  the  broad,  wild 
current,  sometimes  thirty  feet  higher  than  its  banks,  yet  not 


THE  RIVERS  OF  STONE.  185 

overflowing  them  j  a  current  across  which  men  walk  without 
danger  of  sinking,  but  not  without  danger  of  another  sort ; 
a  current  in  which  not  fishes  but  wild  beasts  live — often  even 
one  river  on  top  of  another ! 

You  will  wonder  what  sort  of  rivers  these  can  be.  They 
are  characteristic  of  the  West — there  are  none  of  them  in 
the  East ;  but  in  an  area  larger  than  that  which  holds  three- 
fourths  of  the  population  of  the  United  States  they  are  a 
part  of  the  country.  They  line  hundreds  of  valleys.  If  the 
rest  of  the  landscape  suggests  fire,  they  suggest  it  ten  times 
more.  And  rightly  enough,  for  they  have  seen  fire — nay, 
they  have  been  fire.  They  are  burnt  rivers,  that  ran  as  fire 
and  remain  as  stone. 

By  this  time  you  will  have  guessed  what  I  mean — that 
these  rivers  of  stone  are  neither  more  nor  less  than  lava-flows. 
They  are  stranger  than  that  African  river  of  ink  (made  by 
the  combination  of  chemicals  soaked  from  the  soil),  and  in- 
comparably more  important,  for  they  have  to  do  with  causes 
which  much  more  nearly  affect  mankind.  The  great  differ- 
ence between  the  East  and  West  is  that  the  latter  is  a  vol- 
canic country,  while  the  former  is  not;  and  nearly  all  the 
striking  dissimilarities  of  air,  climate,  landscape,  and  even 
customs  of  the  people,  arise  from  this  fact.  The  West  has 
been  heaved  up  by  the  fires  within,  and  burned  out  and 
parched  dry — so  dry  that  even  the  sky  feels  it.  The  rainfall 
is  far  less  than  in  the  East ;  and  to  make  their  crops  grow 
the  western  farmers  have  to  flood  their  fields  several  times 
in  a  season  from  some  stream  or  reservoir. 


186   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

As  we  go  south  this  volcanic  condition  becomes  more  and 
more  predominant.  The  vast  southwest  is  a  strongly  vol- 
canic country,  and  covered  with  embers  of  its  old  fires. 
There  are  no  active  volcanoes  in  the  United  States,  but  in  the 
southwest  there  are  thousands  of  extinct  ones,  each  with  its 
one  to  a  dozen  black  rivers  of  stone.  These  volcanoes  are 
not  large  peaks  like  the  giants  of  Central  and  South  Amer- 
ica j  most  of  them  are  small  cones  rising  but  little  above  the 
surrounding  plains,  some  not  more  than  fifty  feet.  Yet  so 
elevated  is  the  whole  country  there  that  the  top  of  such  a 
cone  is  frequently  much  higher  above  the  sea-level  than  the 
summit  of  Mount  Washington. 

Of  the  many  volcanic  regions  I  have  explored,  one  of  the 
most  interesting  is  in  the  Zuni  Mountains  of  western  New 
Mexico,  and  along  their  slopes.  All  through  the  range — 
whose  tops  are  over  eight  thousand  feet  in  altitude — are 
scattered  scores  of  extinct  volcanoes;  and  their  lava-flows 
have  overrun  many  thousands  of  square  miles.  The  range 
is  covered  with  a  magnificent  pine  forest — a  rare  enough 
thing  in  the  southwest — partly  growing  upon  ancient  flows, 
and  cut  in  all  directions  by  later  ones.  The  soil  everywhere 
is  sown  with  jagged  fragments  of  lava,  which  makes  travel 
irksome ;  and  in  the  picturesque  Zuni  canon  which  traverses 
the  range  is  a  singular  sight — where  the  lava,  too  impatient 
to  await  outlet  by  a  crater,  boiled  out  in  great  waves  from 
under  the  bottom  of  the  canon's  walls,  which  are  sandstone 
precipices  hundreds  of  feet  high. 

The  largest  crater  in  this  range  is  about  two  miles  south 


THE   RIVERS  OF   STONE.  187 

of  the  lonely  little  ranch-house  at  Agua  Fria.  It  is  a  great, 
reddish-brown,  truncated  cone,  rising  about  five  hundred  feet 
above  the  plateau,  and  from  three  sides  looks  very  regular 
and  round.  Around  it  are  the  tall  pines,  and  a  few  have 
even  straggled  up  its  sides,  as  if  to  see  what  it  all  means. 
But  they  have  found  it  hard  climbing,  and  cling  upon  its 
precipitous  flanks  as  if  disheartened  and  out  of  breath.  Nor 
can  one  blame  them.  To  the  top  of  that  crater  is  one  of 
the  very  hardest  climbs  I  know — the  ascent  of  Pike's  Peak 
did  not  tire  me  nearly  so  much.  The  whole  cone  is  covered 
several  feet  deep  with  coarse,  sharp  volcanic  ashes,  or  rather 
cinders — for  each  fragment  is  as  large  as  the  tip  of  one's 
finger.  The  slope  is  of  extreme  steepness,  and  this  loose 
covering  of  scoria?  makes  ascent  almost  hopeless.  The 
climber  sinks  calf -deep  at  every  step;  and,  worse  still,  at 
every  step  sets  the  whole  face  of  the  slope,  for  a  rod  around, 
to  sliding  down-hill.  No  one  can  go  straight  up  that  ardu- 
ous pitch;  one  has  to  climb  sidewise  and  in  zigzags,  and 
with  frequent  pauses  for  breath ;  and  it  is  a  decided  relief, 
mental  as  well  as  physical,  when  one  stands  at  last  upon  the 
rim  of  that  giant  bowl. 

A  strange,  wild  sight  it  is  when  we  gain  the  edge  of  the 
crater.  A  fairly  terrific  abyss  yawns  beneath  us ;  an  abyss 
of  dizzy  depth  and  savage  grandeur.  Its  bottom  is  far  lower 
than  the  level  of  the  country  around  the  outside  of  the  cone 
— from  that  rim  to  the  bottom  of  the  crater  must  be  eight 
hundred  feet.  In  shape  the  interior  is  less  like  a  great  bowl 
than  a  great  funnel.  The  rim  is  very  narrow — in  many 


188   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

places  not  more  than  six  feet  across — and  terribly  rough. 
The  rock  is  cooked  to  an  absolute  cinder,  and  is  more 
jagged  than  anything  familiar  to  the  East.  Imagine  a  mill- 
ion tons  of  rock  exactly  like  one  great  "clinker"  from  a 
furnace,  and  you  get  some  idea  of  it.  Tall,  weird  cliffs  of  the 
same  roasted  rock  surround  the  crater  a  few  hundred  feet 
below  the  rim  j  and  below  these  again  is  the  long,  swift  slope 
of  scoriae  to  the  V-shaped  bottom.  Under  the  eastern  cliff 
is  a  strange,  misplaced  little  grove  of  cotton- woods,  which 
seem  ill  enough  at  ease  in  that  gruesome  spot — their  roots 
clutching  amid  the  ashy  rocks,  their  tops  hundreds  of  feet 
below  the  rim.  Here  and  there  in  the  cliffs  are  wild,  dark- 
mouthed  caves;  and  from  these  long,  curious  lines  lead 
across  the  slope  of  cinders.  They  look  like  tracks  across  a 
sand-bank — and  tracks  they  are,  though  one  would  never 
look  for  footprints  in  such  a  forbidding  chasm.  But,  oddly 
enough,  this  dead  crater  is  the  chosen  retreat  of  more  than 
one  form  of  life.  There  are  no  other  cotton-woods  in  a  great 
many  miles  except  those  I  have  mentioned — outside  the 
crater  it  is  too  cold  for  this  shivering  tree.  And  this  same 
grim  shelter  has  been  chosen  by  one  of  the  least  delicate  of 
animals — for  those  tracks  are  bear-tracks.  Several  of  these 
big  brutes  live  in  the  caves  of  the  crater  and  of  the  lava-flows 
outside.  The  Agua  Fria  region  is  a  great  place  for  bear; 
and  at  certain  times  of  the  year  they  are  an  enormous  nui- 
sance to  the  people  at  the  rancho,  actually  tearing  down 
quarters  of  beef  hung  against  the  house,  and  very  nearly 
tearing  down  the  house  with  the  meat.  Several  have  been 


THE  EIVEES  OF   STONE.  189 

killed  right  at  the  house.  A  few  days  before  my  last  visit  to 
the  crater  one  of  the  cowboys,  a  powerful  young  Ute  Indian, 
was  herding  the  horses  near  the  foot  of  the  cone,  when  he  saw 
a  huge  black  bear  scrambling  up  the  acclivity.  A  good  shot 
at  nearly  five  hundred  yards  brought  Bruin  rolling  to  the 
foot  of  the  cone,  quite  dead.  His  skin  was  an  imposing  sight 
when  tacked  upon  the  outside  of  the  log-house  to  dry,  for  it 
reached  from  the  ridge-pole  to  the  ground,  and  then  had  sev- 
eral inches  to  spare.  Besides  the  bears,  the  coyotes,  wild-cats, 
and  mountain-lions  which  infest  that  region,  all  make  their 
homes  in  the  caves  of  the  mal  pais  or  "  bad  lands,"  the  gen- 
eral name  in  New  Mexico  for  lava  and  other  volcanic  areas. 
It  is  noticeable  that  only  such  animals  as  these  and  the  dog 
—some  creature  with  cushioned  feet — can  live  or  travel  in 
the  mal  pais.  Anything  with  hoofs,  like  the  deer  or  antelope 
which  abound  there,  or  the  cattle  and  sheep  which  also  range 
those  mountains,  cannot  long  tread  those  savage-edged  rocks. 
The  funnel  of  the  crater  is  not  perfect.  On  the  south  side 
the  huge  bowl  has  lost  part  of  its  rim.  The  crater  is  about 
seven  hundred  yards  across  the  top,  and  nearly  three  hun- 
dred yards  deep  j  and  you  may  imagine  that  it  was  a  rather 
warm  and  weird  time  when  this  great  caldron  was  full  to 
the  brim  with  boiling  rock.  A  terrific  potful  it  must  have 
been,  and  doubly  fearful  when  that  stupendous  weight  burst 
out  the  side  of  the  pot  and  poured  and  roared  down  the  val- 
ley a  flood  of  fire.  Think  of  a  lake  of  lava  so  heavy  that  it 
simply  tore  out  a  mountain-side  eight  hundred  feet  high  and 
five  hundred  feet  thick  at  the  bottom !  The  break  in  the 


190   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

crater  is  in  the  shape  of  a  huge  irregular  V,  nearly  a  thou- 
sand feet  across  the  top,  and  over  five  hundred  from  top  to 
bottom ;  and  all  that  great  slice  of  solid  rock,  weighing  mill- 
ions of  tons  (for  it  takes  only  a  cubic  yard  to  weigh  a  ton), 
was  knocked  out  as  unceremoniously  as  though  a  giant  had 
cleft  it  out  with  an  ax. 

That  is  the  sort  of  spring  in  which  the  rivers  of  stone  had 
their  source  j  and  this  particular  crater  fed  many  enormous 
streams.  Of  course  it  is  many  centuries  since  this  grim 
spring  ran  dry ;  but  we  can  judge  very  well  how  it  acted  when 
it  sent  out  its  strange  hot  floods.  First,  above  the  soughing 
of  the  pines  rose  deep,  pent-up  rumblings,  and  the  solid  earth 
rocked  and  shivered.  Then  there  was  a  great  explosion  just 
where  that  still  brown  cone  stands  to-day,  and  this  great  wart 
was  heaved  up  from  the  level  plateau,  and  a  vast  cloud  of 
steam  and  ashes  sprung  far  into  the  sky.  Then  the  molten 
flood  of  rock  rose  in  the  great  bowl,  and  brimmed  it,  and  ran 
over  in  places,  and  boiled  and  seethed.  And  suddenly,  with 
a  report  louder  than  a  hundred  cannon,  the  wall  of  the  crater 
broke,  and  that  resistless  deluge  of  fire  rolled  like  an  ava- 
lanche down  the  valley,  plowing  a  channel  fifty  feet  deep  in 
the  bed-rock  at  its  outlet,  mowing  down  giant  pines  as  if 
they  had  been  straws,  sweeping  along  enormous  boulders  like 
driftwood,  and  spreading  death  and  eternal  desolation  for 
leagues  around.  A  flood  of  any  sort  is  a  fearful  thing.  I 
have  seen  a  wall  of  water  ninety  feet  high  sweep  down  a  nar- 
row pass,  at  the  bursting  of  a  great  reservoir  at  Worcester, 
Mass.  It  cut  off  oak-trees  two  feet  in  diameter  and  left 


THE  RIVERS  OF   STONE.  191 

of  them  only  square,  splintered  stumps.  A  five-story  brick 
building  stood  in  the  way,  and  quicker  than  you  could  snap 
a  finger  it  was  not.  Iron  pipes  that  weighed  a  thousand 
pounds  floated  on  that  mad  flood  for  a  moment !  And  what 
must  it  be  when  the  breaking  dam  lets  out  an  avalanche  of 
molten  rock  in  a  wave  five  hundred  feet  high  ! 

That  first  outrush  must  have  been  a  sublime  thing.  But 
even  more  than  water,  a  lava  stream  begins  to  lose  force  as 
it  gets  away  from  its  head.  It  is  so  much  thicker  than  water 
at  the  start,  and  with  every  mile  it  grows  thicker  still.  Soon 
it  runs  very  much  like  cold  molasses ;  a  sluggish,  black,  un- 
natural sort  of  stream,  with  its  middle  higher  than  its  sides 
and  the  sides  higher  than  the  banks.  The  process  of  cooling 
begins  very  quickly  and  goes  on  rapidly.  The  "  river  n  runs 
more  and  more  slowly ;"  and  along  its  upper  course  (if  the 
eruption  has  ceased)  a  shell  will  begin  to  form  within  a  fort- 
night.. So  here  is  the  strange  phenomenon  of  a  river  running 
inside  a  stone  conduit  of  its  own  making.  The  shell  becomes 
hard  enough,  long  before  it  is  cool  enough,  to  walk  upon ; 
and  within,  the  fiery  flood  still  pours  along.  A  great  deal  of 
gas  and  steam  is  imprisoned  in  the  molten  flow.  Sometimes 
it  only  makes  huge  bubbles,  which  remain  frozen  in  the  eter- 
nal stone.  I  have  found  these  bubbles  ten  feet  in  diameter 
—curious  arched  caves,  in  which  a  whole  party  might  camp. 
But  if  the  volume  of  gas  be  too  great,  terrific  explosions  oc- 
cur ;  and  in  places  the  top  of  the  flow  for  a  hundred  acres  is 
rent  into  a  million  fragments,  so  sharp-pointed  that  no  crea- 
ture can  cross  them. 


192   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

The  chief  river  of  stone  from  this  crater  is  about  fifty-seven 
miles  long,  and  its  black,  unmoving  flood  covers  some  four 
hundred  square  miles.  It  runs  south  for  a  few  miles  from 
the  crater,  then  makes  a  great  bend  to  the  east,  and,  passing 
the  beautiful  rincon  *  of  Cebollita,  runs  to  the  northeast  nutil 
it  unites  with  a  smaller  flow  in  the  valley  of  the  San  Jose. 
In  places  it  is  a  dozen  miles  wide,  and  in  some  narrow  passes 
not  more  than  a  mile.  At  the  bend  the  hot,  sluggish  current 
actually  ran  a  couple  of  miles  up-hill,  in  its  reluctance  to 
turn  a  corner. 

Not  far  from  this  elbow  in  the  stone  river  is  a  very  inter- 
esting spot.  The  Pueblo  Indians  have  dwelt  for  unknown 
ages  in  that  part  of  New  Mexico ;  and  on  a  fine  rock  bluff  at 
Cebollita  is  one  of  the  handsomest  of  their  prehistoric  ruins 
— a  large  stone  pueblo  surrounded  by  a  noble  stone  wall. 
This  fortified  town  was  already  deserted  and  forgotten  when 
Coronado  came  in  1540.  The  Queres  Pueblos  have  still  a 
legend  of  the  Ano  de  la  iMmbre,  or  "  Year  of  Fire."  They 
say  their  forefathers  dwelt  in  these  valleys  when  the  lava 
floods  came  and  made  it  so  hot  that  all  had  to  move  away  ; 
and  there  is  a  dumb  but  eternal  witness  to  the  truth  of  their 
story.  A  few  miles  from  Cebollita  were  some  of  their  small, 
separate  farm-houses  in  the  pretty  valley,  and  through  one  of 
these  a  current  of  the  stone  river  ran.  There  stands  to  this 
day  that  ancient  house,  long  roofless  but  with  strong  walls 
still ;  and  through  a  gap  in  them  and  over  the  floor  lies  the 
frozen  black  tide. 

There  are  two  islands  in  this  peculiar  river,  and  as  peculiar 

*  Corner. 


THE  RIVERS  OF   STONE.  193 

as  itself.  Instead  of  rising  above  the  flood  they  are  below  it 
—lonely  parks  with  grass  and  stately  pines,  walled  with  the 
black  lava  which  stands  twenty  feet  above  their  level.  The 
largest  of  these  parks  contains  about  twenty  thousand  acres. 
There  is  a  narrow  trail  into  it,  and  it  is  used  as  a  pasture  for 
the  horses  of  the  ninety-seven-thousand-acre  A.  L.  C.  ranch. 
There  are  only  two  trails  by  which  this  lava-flow  can  be 
crossed  by  men  or  horses.  Everywhere  else  it  is  as  much  as 
one's  life  is  worth  to  attempt  a  passage.  No  one  inexperi- 
enced can  conceive  of  the  cruel  roughness  of  these  flows.  The 
strongest  shoes  are  absolutely  cut.  to  pieces  in  a  short  walk ; 
and  then  woe  to  the  walker  if  he  have  not  arrived  at  more 
merciful  ground.  Several  years  ago  a  band  of  horse-thieves, 
led  by  a  desperado  known  as  Charlie  Ross,  were  fleeing  from 
Gallup  with  several  stolen  animals.  The  officers  were  close  at 
their  heels,  and  to  be  overtaken  meant  a  swift  bullet  or  a 
long  rope.  The  "  rustlers  "  missed  the  trail,  but  tried  to  cross 
a  narrow  part  of  the  flow.  It  was  a  cruel  and  indescribable 
passage.  They  got  across  and  escaped — for  the  pursuers 
were  not  so  foolhardy  as  to  enter  the  lava — but  on  foot. 
Their  horses,  including  a  four-hundred-dollar  thoroughbred, 
were  no  longer  able  to  stand.  The  desperate  riders  had 
spurred  them  over  that  cruel  surface  until  their  hoofs  were 
absolutely  gone,  and  the  poor  brutes  had  no  feet  at  all !  The 
robbers  themselves  came  out  barefoot,  and  the  rocks  were 
marked  with  their  blood.  I  am  glad  to  remember  that  the 
pursuers  soon  got  around  the  mal  pais,  and  put  the  horses 
out  of  their  misery. 
17 


194   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

This  flow  runs  for  several  miles  beside  the  track  of  the 
Atlantic  and  Pacific  Railway,  just  west  of  McCarty,  and 
comes  to  an  abrupt  end  in  a  pretty  little  meadow  there. 
The  small  bluish  San  Jose  creek  rises  in  a  cold  spring  which 
pours  forth  from  a  cave  in  the  lava,  very  much  like  the 
beautiful  spring  at  Agua  Fria.  The  creek  evidently  be- 
longed in  the  valley  before  the  lava  came,  and  despite  that 
fearful  invasion  of  fire  it  still  holds  its  own.  For  miles  it 
runs  through  the  great  black  river  of  stone,  now  in  winding 
channels,  and  again  heard  but  unseen  in  long  caves  under 
the  lava.  There  are  also  in  this  part  of  the  flow  a  dozen  or 
more  nearly  circular  basins,  some  filled  with  water  from  the 
brook,  and  a  favorite  breeding-place  for  wild  ducks.  It  is  a 
very  unsatisfactory  place  to  hunt,  however,  for  your  duck  is 
very  liable  to  fall  into  one  of  the  deep,  narrow  cracks  in  the 
lava,  where  he  is  lost  forever. 

The  wildest  and  most  interesting  part  of  this  stone  river  is 
up  near  its  head.  Everywhere  it  keeps  its  old  waves  and  its 
very  eddies,  frozen  into  enduring  rock ;  everywhere  it  has  its 
upheavals  and  its  dangerous  fissures.  But  near  the  crater 
its  surface  is  inconceivably  wild  and  broken.  It  seems  to 
have  gouged  out  a  tremendous  channel  for  itself  in  its  first 
mad  rush.  For  a  mile  the  flow  is  a  succession  of  "  slumps." 
The  solid  rock  beneath  seems  to  have  dropped  out  of  sight, 
and  when  the  fiery  river  cooled  it  dropped  too,  but  only  in 
places.  I  suppose  that  really  the  molten  lava  all  ran  out 
from  that  part  of  the  conduit,  and  that  finally  the  shell  broke 
down  in  spots.  But  what  a  conduit  it  must  have  been ! 


THE  RIVERS  OF   STONE.  195 

For  areas  of  five  acres  of  this  hardest  rock,  twenty  feet  thick, 
have  simply  dropped  dowii  and  lie  at  the  bottom  of  a  savage 
well  seventy-five  feet  deep !  There  are  a  dozen  or  more  of 
these  wild  "  sink-holes,"  varying  from  half  an  acre  in  area 
to  more  than  ten  times  as  much  ;  and  they  are  the  most  for- 
bidding, desolate,  chaotic  wrecks  imaginable.  Most  of  them 
are  inaccessible,  for  their  rock  walls  are  sheer ;  but  I  have 
clambered  down  into  some  of  them,  and  in  every  one  which 
could  be  entered  have  found  the  dens  of  bears  and  other 
wild  beasts.  They  are  safe  enough  there  from  molestation 
even  by  the  ubiquitous  cowboy,  who  has  to  ride  everywhere 
else  in  search  of  stray  cattle. 

In  one  of  these  sinks  I  made  a  curious  discovery  in  the 
fall  of  1891.  Perpetual  snow  is  supposed  not  to  exist  in  the 
southwest.  We  have  several  peaks  over  twelve  thousand 
feet  high,  but  that  is  not  a  sufficient  altitude  for  eternal 
snow  in  this  arid  climate.  The  spring  sun  makes  short  work 
of  the  drifts,  even  at  the  greatest  elevations.  But  here  I 
found  perpetual  snow  at  an  altitude  of  eight  thousand  feet, 
in  the  strangest  refrigerator  nature  ever  built. 

It  was  in  the  largest  of  these  sinks  near  the  Agua  Fria 
crater  —  a  gruesome  pit  into  which  I  descended  with  some 
misgivings,  in  quest  of  bear,  and  in  company  with  the  Ute 
cowboy.  After  exploring  the  various  caves  in  vain,  finding 
plenty  of  traces  of  bear  but  no  bear,  we  went  clambering  over 
the  chaos  of  lava  blocks  to  a  great,  dark  cavity  at  the  head 
of  -the  sink.  Here  the  broken  conduit  showed  plainly.  It  is 
a  huge  tunnel,  with  an  arch  of  nearly  fifty  feet,  and  running 


196   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

back  under  the  lava  no  one  knows  how  far.  In  the  mouth 
of  the  tunnel,  fully  one  hundred  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
flow,  is  a  clear,  cold  pool  of  water,  walled  behind  by  a  bank 
of  snow  twenty  feet  in  visible  thickness.  It  is  flat  as  a  floor 
on  top,  and  sheer  as  a  wall  in  front,  and  runs  back  nearly  a 
hundred  feet.  The  successive  deposits  are  clearly  marked.  In 
the  severe  winter  of  those  mountains  a  great  deal  of  snow 
drifts  into  the  tunnel.  In  summer  this  settles  and  hardens, 
and  volcanic  ashes  blow  in  and  form  a  thin  layer  upon  it. 
The  sun  never  enters  beyond  a  point  about  ten  feet  back  of  a 
perpendicular  from  the  top  of  the  cliff,  and  as  the  cliff  forms 
a  sort  of  bay,  this  mass  of  snow  is  touched  by  the  sun  in  a 
semicircle,  and  melts  so  that  its  face  is  in  the  shape  of  a  cres- 
cent. This  perpendicular  wall  of  snow  twenty  feet  high  is 
very  pretty,  for,  with  its  bluish  strata  interlined  with  the  yel- 
low horizontal  bands  of  dust,  it  looks  for  all  the  world  like  a 
huge  section  of  Mexican  onyx.  It  is  settled  and  solidified 
until  it  is  half  ice  j  but  the  hottest  summer  makes  no  fur- 
ther impression  upon  it.  A  strange  place  for  eternal  snow, 
truly;  a  novel  idea  in  ice-houses — this  refrigerator  in  what 
was  once  the  hottest  place  in  the  world!  The  contrast  is 
noticeable  enough,  even  now.  In  summer  the  sun  beats 
down  into  the  pit  with  great  fury,  and  the  black  rocks  ab- 
sorb its  heat  until  a  hand  can  hardly  be  laid  upon  them. 
But  the  instant  one  steps  into  the  shade  of  the  great  arch 
there  is  a  tremendous  change  in  temperature.  From  being 
nearly  broiled  one  passes  in  two  steps  to  a  chill  which  can- 
not long  be  borne.  Up  under  the  gloomy  rock  arch  twitter- 


THE  RIVERS  OF   STONE.  197 

ing  swallows  have  their  nests,  and  all  the  hot  day  they  skim 
about  in  the  mouth  of  the  tunnel,  now  in  sun  and  now  in 
shade. 

Such  volcanic  ice-houses  are  sometimes  useful,  too.  The 
city  of  Catania  in  Sicily  is  supplied  with  ice  from  a  somewhat 
similar  cavern  in  one  of  the  lava-flows  of  ^Etna.  But  I  do 
not  know  how  the  ice-cave  of  the  Zuni  Mountains  can  ever 
be  made  available,  unless,  indeed,  the  resident  bears  and  wild- 
cats should  take  a  notion  to  drag  in  a  calf  or  deer  and  keep 
it  in  this  unique  cold-storage  warehouse  against  a  possible 
famine. 

Not  only  are  there  these  stone  rivers  in  so  many  of  the 
valleys,  but  thousands  of  the  great  sandstone  mesas  (table- 
lands) of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona  are  capped  with  flat  lava- 
flows  from  ten  to  fifty  feet  thick.  In  some  places  there  are 
solitary  buttes,  one  or  two  hundred  feet  high,  standing  alone 
in  a  plain.  Their  tops  are  solid  lava,  but  there  is  not  another 
sign  of  a  flow  for  miles  around.  Those  flows  were  extremely 
ancient,  and  erosion  has  cut  down  all  the  rest  of  the  lava- 
covered  upland  and  carried  it  away  in  sand,  leaving  only  this 
one  strange  "  island  "  in  token  of  what  once  was.  Very  fre- 
quently, too,  in  such  a  mesa  the  underlying  sandstone  is  so 
much  softer  that  it  has  been  worn  away  first,  and  the  harder 
cap  of  lava  projects  everywhere  like  a  great,  rough  cornice. 


XV. 


THE  NAVAJO  BLANKET. 


NE  of  the  striking  curiosities  of  one  of  our 
Strange  Corners  is  the  Navajo  blanket.  There 
is  no  other  blanket  like  it.  It  is  remarkable 
that  half -naked  savages  in  a  remote  wilderness 
which  is  almost  a  desert,  unwashed  nomads  who 
never  live  in  a  house,  weave  a  handsomer,  more  durable,  and 
more  valuable  blanket  than  is  turned  out  by  the  costly  and 
intricate  looms  of  Europe  and  America  j  but  it  is  true.  The 
covers  which  shelter  us  nights  are  very  poor  affairs,  artis- 
tically and  commercially,  compared  to  those  superb  fabrics 
woven  by  Navajo  women  in  the  rudest  caricature  of  a  loom. 
Blanket-weaving  is  the  one  domestic  industry  of  this  great 
tribe  of  twenty  thousand  souls,  whose  temporary  brush  shel- 
ters dot  the  northwestern  mountains  of  New  Mexico  and  the 
eastern  ranges  of  Arizona ;  but  they  do  it  well.  The  work 
of  the  men  is  stock-raising — they  have  a  million  and  a  half 
of  sheep,  a  hundred  thousand  cattle,  and  several  hundred  thou- 
sand beautiful  ponies— and  they  also  plant  a  very  little  corn. 
The  women  have  no  housework  to  do,  because  they  have  no 
houses — a  very  different  social  condition  from  that  of  their 


THE  NAVAJO  BLANKET.  199 

neighbors,  the  cleanly,  industrious,  farm-tending,  home-lov- 
ing Pueblos.  They  make  hardly  any  pottery,  ^buying  what 
they  need  from  the  expert  Pueblos,  in  exchange  for  their  own 
matchless  blankets,  which  the  Pueblos  no' longer  weave. 

The  Navajo  country  is  a  very  lonely  and  not  altogether 
safe  one,  for  these  Indians  are  jealous  of  intruders  ;  but  it  is 
full  of  interest,  and  there  is  much  to  be  seen  in  safe  prox- 
imity to  the  railroad —particularly  near  Manuelito,  the  last 
station  in  New  Mexico. 

It  fairly  takes  one's  breath  away  to  ride  up  one  of  these 
barren  mesas,  among  the  twisted  pinons,  and  find  a  ragged 
Indian  woman  squatted  before  a  loom  made  of  three  sticks, 
a  rope,  and  a  stone,  weaving  a  blanket  of  great  beauty  in  de- 
sign and  color,  and  with  the  durability  of  iron.  But  that  is 
what  one  may  see  a  thousand  times  in  this  strange  territory 
by  taking  the  necessary  trouble,  though  it  is  a  sight  that  few 
white  people  do  see.  The  Navajo  is  a  seeker  of  seclusion,  and 
instinctively  pitches  his  camp  in  an  out-of-the-way  location. 
You  may  pass  within  fifty  yards  of  his  hogan  and  never  sus- 
pect the  proximity  of  human  life,  unless  your  attention  is 
called  by  one  of  his  wolfish  dogs,  which  are  very  fond  of 
strangers — and  strangers  raw.  If  you  can  induce  the  dog  to 
save  you  for  supper,  and  will  follow  his  snarling  retreat,  this 
is  what  you  may  see : 

-  Under  the  shelter  of  a  juniper,  a  semicircular  wind-break 
built  breast-high  of  brush,  and  about  fifteen  feet  from  point 
to  point;  a  tiny  heap  of  smoldering  coals;  a  few  greasy 
sheep-skins  and  blankets  lying  against  the  brush ;  perhaps 


200   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

the  jerked  meat  of  a  sheep  hanging  to  a  branch,  and  near  it 
pendent  a  few  silver  ornaments  j  a  bottle-necked  basket, 
pitched  without  and  full  of  cold  water  •  an  old  Spencer 
carbine  or  a  Winchester  leaning  against  the  "  wall " ;  a  few 
bare-legged  youngsters  of  immeasurable  mirth,  but  diffident 
toward  strangers  j  mayhap  the  lord  of  the  castle  and  a  male 
companion  or  two  playing  cunquian  with  solemn  faces  and 
Mexican  cards  j  the  dogs,  the  lariated  ponies — and  the  lady 
of  the  house  at  her  remarkable  loom. 

For  simplicity  of  design,  the  Navajo  "loom" — if  it  can  be 
dignified  by  such  a  title — is  unique.  Occasionally  the  frame 
is  made  by  setting  two  posts  firmly  in  the  ground  about  sir 
feet  apart,  and  lashing  cross-pieces  at  top  and  bottom.  Sf 
complicated  an  affair  as  this,  however,  is  not  usual.  Ordi- 
narily a  straight  pole  is  lashed  between  two  trees,  at  a  height 
of  five  or  six  feet  from  the  ground.  A  strong  rawhide  rope, 
wound  loosely  round  and  round  this,  serves  to  suspend  the 
"  supplementary  yarn-beam/7  a  straight  bar  of  wood  five  or 
six  feet  long.  To  this  in  turn  is  attached  a  smaller  bar, 
around  which  the  upper  ends  of  the  stout  strings  which  con- 
stitute the  warp  are  tied.  The  lower  ends  of  these  strings 
are  tied  to  a  similar  bar,  which  is  anchored  by  stones  at  a 
distance  of  about  two  inches  from  the  ground,  thus  keeping 
the  string  taut.  And  there  is  your  loom. 

On  the  ground  a  foot  away  squats  the  weaver,  bare-shinned 
and  bare-armed,  with  her  legs  crossed  tailor  fashion.  The 
warp  hangs  vertically  before  her,  and  she  never  rises  while 
weaving.  A  stick  holds  the  alternate  cords  of  the  warp 


THE  NAVAJO  BLANKET.  201 

apart  in  opposite  directions,  and  thus  enables  her  to  run  the 
successive  threads  of  the  woof  across  without  difficulty.  As 
soon  as  a  thread  has  been  thus  loosely  introduced  to  its 
proper  position,  she  proceeds  to  ram  it  down  with  the  tight- 
ness of  the  charge  in  a  Fourth-of-July  cannon  by  means  of  a 
long,  thin,  hard- wood  "  batten-stick,"  frequently  shaped  some- 
thing like  an  exaggerated  bread-knife.  It  is  little  wonder 
that  that  woof  will  hold  water,  or  stand  the  trampling  of  a 
lifetime.  Every  thread  of  it  is  rammed  home  with  a  series 
of  vicious  jabs  sufficient  to  make  it  "  set  down  and  stay  sot." 
For  each  unit  of  the  frequently  intricate  pattern  she  has  a 
separate  skein;  and  the  unhesitating  skill  with  which  she 
brings  them  in  at  their  proper  intervals  is  astonishing. 

Now,  by  the  time  her  woof  has,  risen  to  a  point  twenty-five 
to  thirty  inches  above  the  ground,  it  is  evident  that  some  new 
arrangement  is  essential  to  her  convenience.  Does  she  get 
up  and  stand  to  the  job  ?  Not  at  all.  She  simply  loosens 
the  spirally  wound  rope  on  the  pole  above  so  that  its  loops 
hang  a  foot  or  two  lower,  thus  letting  down  the  supple- 
mentary yarn-beam  and  the  yarn-beam  by  the  same  amount. 
She  then  makes  a  fold  in  the  loosened  web,  and  tightly  sews 
the  upper  edge  of  this  fold  to  the  cloth-beam  below,  thus 
making  the  web  taut  again.  This  is  the  Navajo  patent  for 
overcoming  the  lack  of  our  "  revolving  cloth-bearers."  This 
operation  is  repeated  several  times  before  a  full-sized  blanket 
is  completed.  The  smallest  size  of  saddle  blanket  can  be 
woven  without  changing  the  loom  at  all. 

All  Navajo  blankets  are  single  ply,  the  pattern  being  the 


202    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

same  on  both  sides.  I  have  seen  but  two  which  had  on  one 
side  a  different  pattern  from  that  on  the  other. 

The  range  of  quality  in  Navajo  blankets  is  great.  The 
common  blanket,  for  bedding  and  rough  wear,  is  a  rude 
thing  indeed  beside  its  feast-day  brother.  These  cheap  ones, 
almost  always  of  full  size — about  six  by  five  feet — are  made 
of  the  native  wool.  The  Navajos  raise  their  own  sheep,  shear 
them,  card,  twist,  and  dye  the  wool.  The  prevailing  color  of 
the  blanket  is  natural — a  whitish  gray — and  through  this 
ground  run  cross-stripes,  generally  of  blue,  but  sometimes 
of  red,  black,  or  yellow.  These  stripes  are  mostly  in  native 
dyes,  the  blue  being  now  obtained  from  American  indigo. 
They  also  dye  in  any  color  with  dyes  made  by  themselves 
from  herbs  and  minerals.  These  wool  blankets  require  a 
week  or  so  for  weaving,  and  sell  at  from  two  dollars  and  a 
half  to  eight  dollars  apiece.  They  are  frequently  half  an 
inch  thick,  and  are  the  warmest  of  blankets,  their  fuzzy 
softness  making  them  much  warmer  than  the  higher-priced, 
tighter-woven,  and  consequently  stiffer  ones. 

In  the  second  grade  of  blankets  there  is  an  almost  endless 
variety.  These  are  now  made  of  Germantown  yarn,  which 
the  Navajos  buy  in  big  skeins  at  the  various  stores  and  trad- 
ing-posts along  the  line  of  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Railway, 
which  passes  some  twenty-five  miles  south  of  the  whole  line 
of  their  reservation.  And  remarkably  fine  blankets  they 
make  of  it.  Their  ability  as  inventors  of  neat  designs  is 
truly  remarkable.  The  cheap  blankets  are  very  much  of  a 
piece  j  but  when  you  come  up  into  patterns,  it  would  be 


THE  NAVAJO  BLANKET.  203 

difficult  to  find  in  the  whole  territory  two  blankets  exactly 
alike.  The  designs  are  ingenious,  characteristic,  and  admira- 
bly worked  out.  Sometimes  the  weaver  traces  the  pattern  on 
the  sand  before  beginning  her  blanket,  but  as  a  rule  she 
composes  it  in  her  head  as  the  work  progresses.  Circles  or 
curved  lines  are  never  used  in  these  blankets.  The  prevail- 
ing patterns  are  straight  stripes,  diagonals,  regular  zigzags, 
diamonds  and  crosses — the  latter  being  to  the  Indians  em- 
blems of  the  morning  or  evening  star. 

The  colors  used  are  limited  in  number.  Scarlet  is  the 
favorite  red,  and  indigo  almost  the  only  blue  in  use.  These 
and  the  white  of  the  bleached  wool  are  the  original  colors, 
and  the  only  ones  which  appear  in  the  very  best  blankets. 
It  is  curious  that  these  savages  should  have  chosen  our  own 
"  red,  white,  and  blue  "  long  before  we  did — they  were  weav- 
ing already  before  the  first  European  ever  saw  America.  The 
Spanish  conquerors  brought  the  first  sheep  to  the  New  World, 
and  soon  gave  these  valuable  animals  to  the  Pueblo  Indians. 
So  wool  came  into  New  Mexico  and  displaced  the  Indian  cot- 
ton, and  the  Navajos  quickly  adopted  the  new  material. 

But  of  late  there  has  been  a  sad  deterioration  in  Navajo 
weaving — the  Indians  have  learned  one  of  the  mean  lessons 
of  civilization,  and  now  make  their  blankets  less  to  wear 
than  to  sell.  So  an  abominable  combination  of  colors  has 
crept  in,  until  it  is  very  difficult  longer  to  get  a  blanket  with 
only  the  real  Indian  hues.  Black,  green,  and  yellow  are 
sometimes  found  in  superb  blankets,  and  so  combined  as  not 
to  lessen  their  value;  but  as  a  rule  these  colors  are  to  be 


204   SOME  STRANGE  COENERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

avoided.  But  now  some  weavers  use  colors  which  to  an  In- 
dian are  actually  accursed — like  violet,  purple,  dark  brown, 
etc.,  the  colors  of  witchcraft — and  such  blankets  are  worth- 
less to  collectors.  With  any  Indian,  color  is  a  matter  of 
religion,  and  red  is  the  most  sacred  of  hues.  The  amount 
of  it  in  a  blanket  largely  determines  the  price.  An  amusing 
instance  of  the  Navajo  devotion  to  red  was  brought  to  my 
notice  some  years  ago.  A  post  trader  had  received  a  ship- 
ment of  prepared  coffee,  half  in  red  papers  and  half  in  blue. 
In  a  month  every  red  package  was  gone,  and  every  blue 
package  was  left  on  the  shelves;  nor  would  the  Indians 
accept  the  blue  even  then  until  long  waiting  convinced  them 
that  there  was  no  present  prospect  of  getting  any  more  red. 

The  largest  of  these  Germantown-yarn  blankets  take  sev- 
eral weeks  to  weave,  and  are  worth  from  fifteen  to  fifty 
dollars. 

The  very  highest  grade  of  Navajo  blanket  is  now  very  rare. 
It  is  a  dozen  years  since  one  of  them  has  been  made;  the 
yarn  blankets,  which  are  far  less  expensive  and  sell  just  as 
well  to  the  ignorant  traveler,  have  entirely  supplanted  them. 
Only  a  few  of  the  precious  old  ones  remain — a  few  in  the 
hands  of  wealthy  Pueblo  Indians  and  Mexicans — and  they 
are  almost  priceless.  I  know  every  such  blanket  in  the  south- 
west, and,  outside  of  one  or  two  private  collections,  the  speci- 
mens can  be  counted  on  one's  fingers.  The  colors  of  these 
choicest  blankets  are  red,  white,  and  blue,  or,  rarely,  just  red 
and  white.  In  a  very  few  specimens  there  is  also  a  little 
black.  Red  is  very  much  the  prevailing  color,  and  takes  up 


THE   NAVAJO   BLANKET.  205 

sometimes  four-fifths  of  the  blanket,  the  other  colors  merely 
drawing  the  pattern  on  a  red  ground. 

This  red  material  is  from  a  fine  Turkish  woolen  cloth, 
called  balleta.  It  used  to  be  imported  to  Mexico,  whence  the 
Navajos  procured  it  at  first.  Later,  it  was  sold  at  some  of 
the  trading-posts  in  this  territory.  The  fixed  price  of  it  was 
six  dollars  a  pound.  The  Navajos  used  to  ravel  this  cloth 
and  use  the  thread  for  their  finest  blankets  j  and  it  made 
such  blankets  as  never  have  been  produced  elsewhere.  Their 
durability  is  wonderful.  They  never  fade,  no  matter  how 
frequently  washed — an  operation  in  which  amole,  the  sapo- 
naceous root  of  the  palmilla,  should  be  substituted  for  soap. 
As  for  wear,  I  have  seen  balleta  blankets  which  have  been 
used  for  rugs  on  the  floors  of  populous  Mexican  houses  for 
fifty  years,  which  still  retain  their  brilliant  color,  and  show 
serious  wear  only  at  their  broken  edges.  And  they  will  hold 
water  as  well  as  canvas  will. 

A  balleta  blanket  like  that  shown  in  the  frontispiece  is 
worth  two  hundred  dollars,  and  not  a  dozen  of  them  could 
be  bought  at  any  price.  It  is  seventy-three  inches  long  by 
fifty-six  inches  wide,  and  weighs  six  pounds.  You  can  easily 
reckon  that  the  thread  in  it  cost  something,  at  six  dollars  a 
pound,  and  the  weaving  occupied  a  Navajo  woman  for  many 
months.  It  is  hardly  thicker  than  the  cover  of  this  book, 
and  is  almost  as  firm.  It  is  too  thin  and  stiff  to  be  an  ideal 
bed-blanket,  and  it  was  never  meant  to  be  one.  All  blankets 
of  that  quality  were  made  to  be  worn  upon  the  shoulders 
of  chiefs;  and  most  of  them  were  ponchos — that  is,  they 
18 


206   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

had  a  small  slit  left  in  the  center  for  the  wearer  to  put  his 
head  through,  so  that  the  blanket  would  hang  upon  him 
like  a  cape.  Thus  it  was  combined  overcoat,  waterproof,  and 
adornment.  I  bought  this  specimen,  after  weeks  of  diplo- 
macy, from  Martin  del  Valle,  the  noble-faced  old  Indian  who 
has  been  many  times  governor  of  the  cliff-built  "city"  of 
Acoma.  He  bought  it  twenty  years  ago  from  a  Navajo  war- 
chief  for  a  lot  of  ponies  and  turquoise.  He  has  used  it  ever 
since,  but  it  is  as  brilliant,  and  apparently  as  strong,  as  the 
day  it  was  finished. 

These  finest  blankets  are  seldom  used  or  shown  except 
upon  festal  occasions,  such  as  councils,  dances,  and  races. 
They  are  then  brought  forth  with  all  the  silver  and  beaded 
buckskin,  and  in  a  large  crowd  of  Indians  make  a  truly  start- 
ling display.  Some  wear  them  the  middle  girt  around  the 
waist  by  a  belt  of  heavy  silver  disks,  the  lower  end  falling 
below  the  knees,  the  upper  end  thrown  loosely  over  the 
shoulders.  Others  have  them  thrown  across  the  saddle,  and 
others  tie  them  in  an  ostentatious  roll  behind. 

The  Navajos  and  Pueblos  also  weave  remarkably  fine  and 
beautiful  belts  and  garters,  from  two  to  eight  inches  wide 
and  two  to  nine  feet  long  j  and  durable  and  pretty  dresses 
for  their  women. 

The  loom  for  weaving  one  of  the  handsome  belts  worn  by 
Pueblo  women  is  quite  as  simple  as  that  of  the  Navajos  for 
weaving  blankets.  One  end  of  the  warp  is  fastened  to  a  stake 
driven  into  the  ground  in  front  of  the  weaver,  the  other  to  a 
rod  held  in  place  by  a  strap  around  her  waist ;  so  to  tighten 


THE  NAVAJO  BLANKET.  207 

the  warp  she  has  only  to  sit  back  a  little  The  device  for 
separating  the  alternate  threads  of  the  warp  so  that  the  shut- 
tle can  be  pushed  through  looks  like  a  small  rolling-pin ;  and 
in  the  weaver's  right  hand  is  the  oak  batten-stick  for  ramming 
the  threads  of  the  woof  tightly  together.  The  weaver  sits 
flat  upon  the  ground  5  generally  upon  a  blanket  to  keep  her 
mania  clean,  for  the  dress  of  a  Pueblo  woman  is  neat,  hand- 
some, and  expensive.  These  belts  are  always  two-ply,  that  is, 
the  pattern  on  one  side  is  different  from  that  on  the  other. 

It  may  also  be  news  to  you  to  learn  that  both  Navajos  and 
Pueblos  are  admirable  silversmiths,  and  make  all  their  own 
jewelry.  Their  silver  rings,  bracelets,  earrings,  buttons,  belts, 
dress  pins,  and  bridle  ornaments  are  very  well  fashioned  with 
a  few  rude  tools.  The  Navajo  smith  works  on  a  flat  stone 
under  a  tree ;  but  the  Pueblo  artificer  has  generally  a  bench 
and  a  little  forge  in  a  room  of  his  house. 


XVI. 


THE   BLIND  HUNTERS. 

these  Strange  Corners  a  great  many  things  seem 
to  be  exactly  reversed  from  what  we  are  accus- 
tomed to.  For  instance,  with  us  "a  hunter's 
eye "  is  a  synonym  for  perfect  sight,  and  we 
fancy  that  if  any  one  in  the  world  needs  good 
vision  it  is  he  who  follows  the  chase.  But  in  the  quaint 
southwest  the  most  important  hunters — and,  in  the  belief 
of  thousands  of  the  natives,  the  most  successful  ones — can- 
not see  at  all !  They  are  stone-blind,  which  is  not  so  out  of 
keeping,  after  all,  since  they  themselves  are  stones!  Very 
pretty  stones  are  these  famous  little  Nimrods — snowy  quartz, 
or  brilliant  agate,  or  jasper,  or  a  peculiar  striped  spar  which 
is  found  in  some  parts  of  New  Mexico.  That  is  their  body. 
Then  their  eyes  are  of  coral,  or  blue  turquoise  from  the  pre- 
historic mines  in  Mount  Chalchuhuitl  near  Santa  Fe ;  and 
their  hearts  are  always  of  turquoise,  which  is  the  most  pre- 
cious thing  known  to  the  aborigines  of  the  southwest,  for  it 
is  the  stone  which  stole  its  color  from  the  sky. 

"  But  how  can  a  blind  stone  with  a  turquoise  heart  be  a 
hunter?"  you  ask.     Well,  that  depends  on  the  locality.     I  do 


THE  BLIND  HUNTERS.  209 

not  imagine  he  would  count  for  much  in  a  Queen's  County 
fox-chase,  but  out  here  he  can  be  a  hunter  very  well.  Here 
lie  is  the  very  king  of  hunters;  and  no  party  of  Indians 
would  think  for  an  instant  of  going  out  for  deer  or  antelope, 
or  even  rabbits,  except  under  his  leadership  and  with  his  aid. 

These  stone  hunters  are  the  hunt-fetiches  of  the  Indians. 
They  are  tiny  images  of  the  most  successful  animals  of  prey — 
like  the  cougar,  bear,  eagle,  and  wolf — rudely  carved  from  the 
hardest  stone  into  a  clumsy  but  unmistakable  likeness.  The 
image  alone  is  not  enough.  An  arrow-head  of  agate  or  vol- 
canic glass  is  always  bound  with  sinew  to  its  right  side,  and 
under  the  turquoise  heart  is  always  a  pinch  of  the  sacred 
corn-meal.  These  little  stone  statues  are  supposed  to  com- 
municate to  those  who  carry  them  all  the  hunter-craft  of  the 
animal  which  they  represent.  Every  Indian  carries  a  fetich 
when  he  hunts,  and  derives  its  power  from  it  by  putting  its 
mouth  to  his  own  and  drawing  in  his  breath — "drinking 
the  breath "  of  the  image.  This  ceremony  is  indispensable 
at  the  beginning  of  a  hunt,  and  at  various  stages  of  its 
progress.  The  favorite  hunt-fetich  among  the  Pueblos  is 
the  mountain-lion  or  cougar,  keem-ee-deh,  which  they  deem 
the  king  of  animals. 

The  hunter,  when  he  strikes  a  trail,  takes  a  forked  twig  and 
places  it  in  front  of  a  footprint,  with  the  fork  opening  back- 
ward. This  is  to  trip  the  fleeing  game.  Then  he  draws  from 
his  "left-hand  bag"  (the  shoulder-pouch  which  serves  the  In- 
dian for  a  pocket)  his  fetich,  inhales  its  "  breath  of  strength," 
and  prays  to  it — or  rather  to  the  animal  spirit  it  represents 


210   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

— to  help  him ;  and  then,  before  following  the  trail,  imitates 
the  roar  of  his  patron-beast,  to  terrify  and  bewilder  the  game. 
He  firmly  believes  that  without  these  superstitious  ceremo- 
nials he  would  stand  no  chance  at  all  in  the  hunt,  but  that 
with  them  he  is  sure  to  succeed. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  the  importance  which  the 
Indian  attaches  to  all  matters  connected  with  game.  We  are 
at  a  point  in  civilization  where  such  things  concern  us  only 
as  pastimes,  but  to  the  Indian  the  hunt  is  still  the  corner- 
stone of  life,  or  has  been  until  so  recently  that  he  has  not 
lost  the  old  feeling.  A  matter  so  vital  to  the  human  race — 
in  his  eyes — has  become  the  nucleus  for  a  vast  quantity  of 
his  most  sacred  beliefs.  The  animals  which  are  successful 
hunters  are  objects  of  reverence,  and  he  is  careful  to  invoke 
their  aid,  that  his  own  pursuit  may  be  as  fortunate  as  theirs. 
Indeed,  the  whole  process  of  hunting  is  involved  in  an  enor- 
mous amount  of  religious  " red-tape" — for  you  must  remem- 
ber that  the  Indian  never  does  anything  simply  "for  fun." 
He  enjoys  many  things ;  but  he  does  them  not  for  enjoyment, 
but  for  a  superstitious  end. 

Even  my  neighbors,  the  Pueblos,  who  have  been  farmers 
and  irrigators  for  unknown  centuries,  preserve  almost  un- 
abated their  ancient  traditions  and  usages  of  the  chase,  and 
a  hunt  of  any  sort  is  a  very  religious  affair,  whether  it  be  a 
simple  foray  of  two  or  three  men,  or  one  of  the  great  com- 
munal hunts  in  which  many  hundreds  are  engaged.  One  of 
their  chief  branches  of  medicine-men  are  those  who  have  ab- 
solute control  of  all  matters  pertaining  to  game.  These  are 


THE  BLIND  HUNTERS.  211 

named,  in  the  language  of  the  Tigua  Pueblos,  the  Hoo-mah- 
koon  ("those  who  have  death  in  their  arms").  According  to 
their  folk-lore  the  Hoo-mah-koon  were  created  just  after  man- 
kind emerged  from  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  and  were  the 
first  of  all  branches  of  medicine,  except  only  the  Kdh-pee-oo- 
nin  ("  those  who  are  dying  of  cold,"  in  allusion  to  the  almost 
nakedness  in  which  they  always  make  their  official  appear- 
ance), who  broke  through  the  crust  of  the  earth  and  led  their 
people  out  to  the  light. 

In  the  sacred  songs  of  the  H6o-mah-koon  of  the  Pueblo  of 
Isleta,  where  I  lived  for  four  years,  it  is  declared  that  they 
came  here  first  from  the  town  of  the  Wolfs  Den,  one  of  the 
picturesque  ruins  in  the  great  plains  east  of  the  Manzano 
Mountains.  The  order  in  Isleta  numbers  seven  men.  Be- 
ginning in  May  of  every  year  there  is  always  a  series  of  com- 
munal rabbit  hunts,  one  a  week  for  seven  weeks.  The  first 
of  these  hunts  is  under  the  command  of  the  senior  H6o-mah- 
koo-ee-deh  (the  singular  of  Hoo-mah-koon),  the  second  hunt 
under  the  next  in  rank,  and  so  on  until  each  of  the  captains 
of  the  hunt  has  had  a  day  in  the  order  of  his  seniority. 

The  official  crier  of  the  village  announces  the  night  before 
that  on  the  morrow  will  be  Nah-kii-ah-sJm  (the  round-hunt), 
in  stentorian  tones  which  none  but  the  deaf  can  fail  to  hear. 
That  evening  the  Hoo-mah-koon  and  other  dignitaries  hold 
ydh-wheh  (the  drawing-dance),  to  charm  the  game.  The  danc- 
ing and  singing  are  supposed  (though  conducted  in  a  house) 
to  reach  and  fascinate  the  ears  of  all  wild  animals,  so  that 
they  cannot  hear  the  approach  of  the  hunter  on  the  mor- 


212   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

row  j  and  in  the  intervals  of  the  dance  all  who  are  present 
smoke  vigorously  the  weer,  or  sacred  cigarette,  whose  clouds 
blind  the  eyes  of  the  game  and  make  them  less  watchful. 
The  songs  sung  at  the  drawing-dance  vary  according  to  the 
game  to  be  hunted  next  day,  and  always  begin  with  a  refrain 
that  has  no  meaning,  but  is  an  imitation  of  the  cry  of  that 
animal.  Before  the  great  fall  round-hunt  for  deer  and  ante- 
lope, the  song  is  one  which  may  be  translated  as  follows : 

HUNTING   SONG. 
Beh-eh  eh-k'hay-roh, 
Beh-eh  eh-k'hay-roh, 
Beh-eh  eh-k'hay-roh. 
I  am  the  mountain-lion  young  man, 
I  am  the  mountain-lion  young  man, 
I  am  the  mountain-lion  young  man, 
Antelope  thigh  in  my  house  hangs  plenty, 
Antelope  shoulder  in  my  house  hangs  plenty, 
Antelope  heart  in  my  house  hangs  plenty, 
I  am  the  mountain-lion  young  man, 
Deer  head  in  my  house  hangs  plenty, 
Deer  liver  in  my  house  hangs  plenty, 
All  deer  meat  in  my  house  hangs  plenty, 
I  am  the  mountain-lion  young  man. 

The  dance  and  other  services  last  most  of  the  night.  At 
the  appointed  time  in  the  morning  the  Hoo-mah-koon  repair 
to  a  certain  sand-hill  on  the  edge  of  the  plains,  about  two 
miles  from  the  pueblo,  the  invariable  starting-point  for  all 
hunts  to  the  westward,  and  thither  follow  several  hundred  of 
the  men  and  grown  boys  of  the  village.  At  a  certain  sacred 
spot  the  chief  of  the  Hoo-mah-koon  starts  a  small  fire  with 
the  most  impressive  ceremonies,  singing  meanwhile  a  chant 


THE  BLIND  HUNTERS.  213 

which  relates  how  fire  was  first  discovered  and  how  transmit- 
ted— both  of  which  important  deeds  are  credited  to  the  Hoo- 
mah-koon.  None  outside  that  order — not  even  a  member 
of  one  of  the  other  branches  of  medicine-men — dare  make 
that  fire,  and  the  chief  Hoo-mah-koo-ee-deh  must  light  it 
only  in  the  sacred  way,  namely,  with  the  ancient  fire-drill  or 
with  flint  and  steel.  He  would  expect  to  be  struck  dead  if 
he  were  to  kindle  it  with  the  impious,  new-fangled  matches, 
which  are  now  used  by  the  Pueblos  for  all  common  uses,  but 
must  not  enter  any  sacred  ceremony  whatever. 

When  the  holy  fire  is  well  under  way  the  Hoo-mah-koon 
stand  around  it  with  bowed  heads,  invoke  the  fetiches,  and 
pray  to  Those  Above  to  bless  the  hunt.  Then  their  chief 
selects  two  men  to  lead  the  hunt,  puts  them  in  front  of 
all  the  crowd,  instructs  them  where  to  close  the  circle,  and 
pushes  them  apart  with  the  command  "  Go ! "  These  two 
start  running  in  divergent  lines.  In  a  moment  two  more 
are  started  after  them,  and  two  more,  and  so  on  until  all  the 
hundreds  of  hunters  are  in  motion  along  two  files  like  the 
arms  of  a  V,  the  knot  of  Hoo-mah-koon  forming  the  apex. 
The  two  leaders  run  on  for  a  designated  distance,  all  the  time 
getting  farther  apart,  and  then  begin  to  converge  toward  one 
another  until  they  meet  at  the  appointed  spot,  frequently  a 
couple  of  miles  from  the  starting-point.  Meeting,  they  hold 
their  clubs  in  the  right  hand,  pass  each  other  on  the  same 
side  and  make  cross-lines  on  the  ground,  by  which  they  stand. 

By  this  time  a  cordon  of  hunters  in  the  shape  of  an  ellipse 
has  been  formed  by  their  followers,  and  now  at  the  signal 


214   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

from  the  Hoo-mah-koon  the  cordon  begins  to  shrink  inward, 
the  old  men  smoking  continually  to  keep  the  game  blinded. 
The  hunters  are  armed  only  with  boomerangs,  which  they 
hurl  with  force  and  precision  that  are  simply  marvelous. 
Very  little  game  that  has  been  surrounded  thus  ever  escapes, 
even  to  the  swift- winged  quail.  A  dozen  or  more  of  these  big 
surrounds  are  made  in  the  course  of  the  day,  and  all  the 
game  that  is  killed  in  the  first  two  goes  to  the  Hoo-mah-koo- 
ee-deh  who  is  in  command  for  that  day.  The  Hoo-mah-koon 
get  their  peculiar  name  from  the  fact  that  as  soon  as  an 
animal  is  killed  they  sit  down  and  hug  it  upon  their  laps, 
sprinkling  it  with  the  sacred  meal. 

In  the  evening,  when  the  successful  hunters  return  to  the 
pueblo,  heavily  laden  with  game,  they  proceed  to  the  house 
of  the  cacique  (the  chief  religious  official)  and  sing  before  it 
the  following  song,  unchanged  from  the  days  when  they 
hunted  the  lordliest  game  on  the  American  continent : 

SONG  AFTER  THE  HUNT. 

Ah,  ee-yah,  ee-yah,  hay  h'yah-ee-ah, 
Ah,  ee-yah,  ee-yah,  hay  h'yah-ee-ah, 
Ah,  ee-yah,  ee-yah,  hay  h'yah-ee-ah. 
Yonder  in  the  wee-ow-weew-bahn, 

[In  Indian  Territory] 
There  stays  the  buffalo, 
Commander  of  beasts, 
Him  we  are  driving 
Hither  from  yonder, 
With  him  as  prey 
We  are  arriving, 
With  him  as  prey 
Now  we  come  in. 


THE  BLIND  HUNTERS.  215 

As  the  last  line  is  sung,  some  of  the  hunters  enter  the 
house  of  the  cacique,  bearing  a  present  of  game. 

His  own  share  each  hunter  carries  to  his  home,  and  when 
the  animal  is  cooked  its  head  is  invariably  given  to  him  who 
kills  it.  By  eating  this  the  hunter  is  supposed  to  acquire 
something  from  the  animal  itself  which  will  make  him  suc- 
cessful in  killing  others  of  its  kind.  The  Pueblos  have  a 
curious  custom  concerning  rabbits,  which  are  now  more  nu- 
merous than  any  other  game,  hundreds  being  killed  in  every 
round-hunt  on  the  plain.  They  will  not,  under  any  circum- 
stances, fry  them,  nor  touch  one  which  has  been  thus  cooked. 
The  only  way  in  which  a  True  Believer  will  prepare  rabbit  is 
to  "  make  it  as  people."  The  animal  is  skinned  and  drawn. 
Then  its  long  ears  are  twisted  into  a  knot  on  top  of  its  head  j 
the  fore-legs  are  twisted  so  that  their  ankles  are  under  the 
"arm-pits,"  and  the  hind  legs  are  crossed  and  pinned  be- 
hind the  back.  Why  this  extraordinary  distortion  should  be 
deemed  to  make  poor  bunny  look  "  like  people,"  I  have  never 
been  able  to  learn ;  nor  yet  the  cause  for  this  custom,  except 
that  it  was  given  them  "  by  those  of  old,"  and  that  the  Trues 
order  it  to  be  continued.  After  it  has  been  trussed  up  in 
this  shape  the  rabbit  is  roasted  in  one  of  the  quaint  adobe 
out-door  ovens,  or  stewed  whole  in  a  big  earthen  jar  with 
home-ground  corn-meal. 

No  private  party  ever  thinks  of  starting  on  a  hunting  trip 
without  first  securing  the  intercession  of  the  Hoo-mah-koon 
with  Those  Above  for  their  success  and  safety.  When  a 
number  of  men  decide  to  go  on  a  hunt,  or  on  any  other  jour- 


216   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

ney,  they  meet  and  select  the  wisest  among  them  to  go  to 
the  Hoo-mah-koon  and  ask  them  to  "give  the  road."  The  am- 
bassador chosen  for  this  important  and  honorable  mission 
at  once  bids  his  wife,  mother,  or  sister  to  prepare  the  sacred 
meal,  without  which  no  such  request  would  dare  be  made  of 
the  medicine-men.  She  selects  and  grinds  the  white  or  yel- 
low corn  to  meal,  and  wraps  it  in  the  ceremonial  corn-husk 
wrapper  5  and  the  ambassador  thus  equipped  goes  with  his 
request  to  the  chief  H6o-mah-koo-ee-deh.  The  medicine-man 
takes  the  sacred  meal  with  his  right  hand  and  holds  it  all  the 
time  the  ambassador  is  present,  and  names  the  night  when 
he  will  come  to  a  designated  house  (that  of  one  of  the  party), 
foretell  the  fortunes  of  their  journey,  and  "give  the  road." 

After  eight  o'clock  on  the  appointed  night,  which  is  almost 
invariably  the  one  before  the  hunters  are  to  start,  all  the 
Hoo-mah-koon  gather  at  that  house,  where  the  hunters  are 
present  with  such  of  their  friends  as  desire  to  be  benefited. 
The  Hoo-mah-koon  go  through  the  usual  jugglery  of  a  medi- 
cine-dance, and  then  proceed  to  forecast  the  proposed  jour- 
ney, taking  their  omens  in  any  number  of  ways,  somewhat 
after  the  fashion  of  the  soothsayers  of  ancient  Greece  and 
Rome.  In  one  case  in  my  knowledge  a  prominent  Indian 
here  was  going  to  travel  horseback  several  hundred  miles  to 
trade  with  the  Mescalero  Apaches.  The  chief  Hoo-mah-koo- 
ee-deh  went  out  and  combed  the  horse  that  was  to  be  ridden, 
and  returned  with  the  combings,  which  he  began  to  sort  over 
with  great  solemnity.  At  last  he  handed  to  the  traveler  a 
lot  of  light  hairs  with  one  dark  one  among  them,  and  said : 


THE   BLIND   HUNTERS.  217 

"  You  are  on  your  way  to  break  the  rifle  you  carry,  for  the 
horse  will  fall  and  throw  you  as  you  go  down  a  hill.  And 
you  will  trade  the  broken  rifle  for  this  dark  horse,"  pointing 
to  I  lie  one  dark  hair.  The  traveler,  who  is  a  very  reliable 
Indian,  and  who  made  one  of  the  best  governors  the  pueblo 
ever  had,  vows  that  it  befell  exactly  so.  His  horse  threw 
him,  the  rifle  was  broken  in  the  fall,  and  he  traded  it  for  a 
horse  the  very  color  of  that  hair!  Who  could  ask  more 
convincing  proof  that  the  medicine-man  had  indeed  "the 
power"? 

After  the  fortunes  of  the  journey  have  been  thus  fore- 
told all  present  join  in  the  following  chant.  At  the  words 
"  Hither !  Hither !  "  those  who  are  to  travel  draw  their  hands 
toward  them  repeatedly,  and  the  others  perform  a  similar  in- 
cantation with  their  breath.  This  is  intended  to  "  draw  to  n 
the  traveler  the  game  or  other  object  of  his  journey. 

SONG  BEFORE  THE  JOURNEY. 

Hither!    Hither! 
This  way !    This  way ! 
[Pointing  in  the  direction  to  be  taken.] 
Life  for-the-sake-of, 
Health  for-the-sake-of, 
Our  children  for-the-sake-of, 
Our  animals  for-the-sake-of, 
Game  for-the-sake-of, 
Clothing  for-the-sake  of, 
Thus  with  empty  hands 
Thus  we  go  out. 

As  the  last  two  lines  are  sung  all  brush  their  left  palms 
with  their  right.    After  this  song  the  Hoo-mah-koon  pray  to 
19 


218   SOME  STRANGE  COENERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

the  Trues  to  bless  the  journey,  and  then  "  give  the  road" — 
that  is,  their  official  permission  to  start. 

The  Pueblos  have,  by  the  way,  a  c*  coyote  telegraph,"  which 
is  used  in  hunts,  and  used  to  be  in  war,  by  which  they  can 
impart  news  or  commands  several  miles  by  yells  which  are  a 
perfect  imitation  of  the  coyote  Any  one  who  had  not  learned 
the  "  code  n  would  imagine  it  merely  the  usual  concert  of  the 
cowardly  little  wolves  of  the  prairie.  The  cry  of  the  genuine 
coyote,  too,  is  always  a  significant  omen  to  the  Pueblo.  One 
short,  sharp  bark  is  a  token  of  impending  danger,  and  any 
party  that  hears  that  warning  will  at  once  turn  back,  no 
matter  how  important  its  mission.  Two  short  cries  close  to- 
gether mean  that  some  one  is  dead  in  the  village.  Three 
short  successive  yelps,  followed  by  the  long  wail,  is  under- 
stood as  sure  proof  that  the  principals  of  the  town  have  tried 
some  person  accused  of  witchcraft  and  have  found  a  verdict 
of  guilty ;  and  so  on. 


XVII. 

FINISHING  AN  INDIAN  BOY. 

MONG-  the  countless  oddities  of  custom  which 
prevail  in  the  southwest,  perhaps  none  would 
strike  my  young  countrymen  as  odder  than 
the  graduating  exercises  of  a  Pueblo  lad.  It 
is  certainly  a  very  different  sort  of  graduation 
from  any  known  to  eastern  schools ;  and  I  fear  a  great  many 
of  our  bright  pupils  would  fail  to  pass  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  examiners. 

Among  all  Indian  tribes  there  is  a  much  more  thorough 
course  of  home  education  than  we  generally  imagine.  Any 
observant  man,  if  he  be  half  as  intelligent  as  the  average 
Indian,  cannot  watch  the  latter  without  feeling  that  this 
brown  fellow  has  a  remarkable  scholarship  of  the  senses.  The 
education  of  eye  and  ear,  and  of  the  perceptive  faculties,  is 
nothing  short  of  marvelous  to  us,  who  have  not  left  of  any 
of  these  senses  a  tithe  o±  the  acuteness  Nature  meant  us  to 
have.  But  if  the  observer  can  get  "  on  the  inside  of  things  " 
and  really  understand  Indian  life,  he  finds  a  much  more  re- 
markable education  in  the  strange  lore  of  a  strange  people. 


220   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

Such  memories  are  hardly  ever  found  among  "  civilized " 
people  as  are  common  to  those  who  have  no  books  nor 
writing  to  remember  for  them;  and  it  takes  such  marvelous 
memories  to  retain  all  that  the  member  of  Indian  society 
must  carry  in  his  head.  I  have  found  the  study  of  the  train- 
ing of  my  young  Pueblo  neighbors  very  interesting. 

The  girls  are  taught  little  beyond  their  duties  as  home- 
makers  and  home-keepers — which  is  a  considerable  education 
in  itself,  for  the  Pueblo  woman  is  a  very  good  housewife. 
But  the  boys  all  go  through  a  very  serious  and  arduous  train- 
ing to  fit  them  for  the  responsibilities  of  Indian  manhood. 
Every  lad  is  expected  to  become  an  athlete  of  agility  and  en- 
durance, to  be  expert  in  war  and  the  hunt,  to  know  and  keep 
word  for  word  the  endless  stories  which  embody  the  customs 
and  laws  of  his  people,  and  to  be  educated  in  many  other 
ways.  His  training  begins  as  soon  as  he  can  talk  and  be 
talked  to ;  and  it  continues,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  as  long 
as  he  lives.  As  for  the  lad  who  is  elected  to  follow  the  unat- 
tractive life  of  a  medicine-man,  he  has  before  him  one  long 
curriculum  of  toil.  In  all  Indian  tribes  the  shamans  or 
medicine-men  are  the  most  important  personages — the  real 
"  power  behind  the  throne/'  no  matter  what  the  outward 
form  of  government.  Upon  them  depends  the  success  of  the 
farmer,  the  hunter,  the  warrior  •  they  have  to  keep  witches 
from  swooping  off  the  people,  to  give  proper  welcome  to  new- 
comers to  this  world,  to  cure  the  sick,  and  give  safeguard 
to  the  departed  on  their  long  journey  to  the  Other  Country. 
Besides  the  extremely  numerous  societies  of  medicine-inen, 


FINISHING  AN  INDIAN  BOY.  221 

there  are  many  other  secret  orders  among  the  Pueblos ;  and 
initiation  into  one  or  more  of  these  is  part  of  the  education 
of  the  young  Indian  boy. 

Some  time  ago  a  bright  young  neighbor  and  friend  of 
mine,  then  twelve  years  old,  was  received  into  the  important 
order  of  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen — who  are  a  sort  of  police 
against  witches  and  armed  guards  of  the  Fathers  of  Medicine. 
In  his  infancy  Refugio  had  been  sickly,  and  to  induce  the 
Trues  to  spare  his  life  his  parents  had  "given"  him  to  the 
gray-headed  chief  of  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen.  This  old  sha- 
man thus  became  Refugio's  "  medicine-father,"  and  used  to 
visit  him  regularly — for  the -boy  continued  to  live  with  his 
real  parents.  This  giving  for  adoption  into  an  order  or  into 
another  clan  is  common  among  the  Pueblos.  It  does  not  at 
all  break  up  the  home  ties,  but  merely  gives  the  boy  an  extra 
godfather  as  it  were.  The  first  day  after  the  adoption,  the 
old  shaman  came  in  person,  inquired  as  to  the  boy's  health, 
held  him  awhile  in  his  arms,  prayed  for  him,  and  went  away. 
Next  day  the  second  in  authority  of  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen 
called  and  did  Likewise j  the  third  day,  the  third  in  rank; 
and  so  on  until  every  member  of  the  order  had  made  his 
ceremonial  visit.  Then  the  chief  shaman  began  again,  and 
after  him  day  by  day  came  his  medicine-brothers  in  the  order 
of  their  rank.  These  formal  visits  had  been  kept  up  daily, 
through  all  these  years,  with  absolute  punctuality,  until  Re- 
fugio was  deemed  old  enough  to  become  a  full  member  of 
the  lodge  into  which  he  had  been  adopted.  All  this  time,  of 
course,  he  had  been  under  the  general  tuition  of  the  order ; 


222   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

and  his  "brothers"  had  given  him  a  general  education — but 
had  not  intrusted  him  with  their  special  secrets. 

When  at  last  his  initiation  was  decided  upon,  he  was  made 
to  keep  a  solemn  fast  for  twenty-four  hours.  Then,  after 
undown,  he  was  led  by  his  medicine-father  to  the  medicine  - 
house,  where  the  whole  order  of  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen  were 
already  assembled. 

Removing  their  moccasins  at  the  door,  the  old  chief  and 
the  lad  entered  the  low,  dark  room — lighted  only  by  the 
sacred  fire,  whose  flickering  embers  flung  ghostly  shadows 
across  the  dark  rafters — and  stood  before  the  solemn  semi- 
circle of  squatting  men.  Standing  there  with  bowed  head, 
the  medicine-father  prayed  to  the  Trues  of  the  East,  the 
Trues  of  the  North,  the  Trues  of  the  West,  the  Trues  of  the 
South,  the  Trues  Above  and  the  Trues  Here-in-the-Center. 
So  punctilious  is  Pueblo  superstition  that  it  would  be  deemed 
an  infamy  to  address  their  six  cardinal  points  in  any  other 
order.  Only  a  witch  would  ever  think  of  naming  first  North, 
then  West,  South,  etc.  Having  thus  invoked  the  blessing  of 
all  the  deities,  the  old  man  took  the  trembling  lad  by  the 
hand  and  said  to  his  fellows :  "  Brothers,  friends,  this  is  my 
son.  From  now,  he  is  to  take  our  road.  Receive  him  and 
teach  him  in  the  ways  of  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen." 

"  It  is  well,"  replied  the  others.  "Ah-hlai  !  Sit  down  on 
what  ye  have." 

The  old  man  and  Refugio  placed  their  moccasins  and 
shoulder-blankets  upon  the  bare  adobe  floor,  and  seated 


FINISHING  AN  INDIAN  BOY.  223 

themselves  thereon.  It  would  be  an  unheard-of  sacrilege  for 
an  Indian  to  occupy  a  chair  or  bench  upon  any  such  sacred 
occasion.  He  must  sit  only  "upon  what  he  has" — and  if  it 
be  summer,  when  no  blanket  is  worn,  his  moccasins  are  his 
only  seat. 

Then  the  chief  shaman's  first  assistant — had  the  boy  been 
adopted  by  any  of  the  others,  the  chief  himself  would  have 
officiated  now — prepared  and  handed  them  the  weer,  or 
sacred  cigarette.  The  ordinary  cigarette  of  tobacco  rolled 
in  a  bit  of  corn-husk  or  brown  paper,  which  is  commonly 
smoked  for  pleasure,  is  never  used  in  a  religious  ceremony. 
The  weer  can  be  lighted  only  at  the  sacred  fire  j  and  having 
kindled  his  at  the  coals,  Refugio  began  to  puff  slowly,  as  he 
had  been  directed.  This  smoke-trying  is  always  the  first  duty 
of  a  candidate,  and  it  is  no  mean  test  of  the  earnestness  of  his 
desire  to  "  take  the  road."  He  must  smoke  the  weer  down  to 
its  last  whiff  and  inhale  every  particle  of  smoke,  not  a  sus- 
picion of  which  must  escape  from  his  mouth.  The  first  three 
or  four  whiffs  almost  invariably  make  him  deathly  sick,  but 
it  is  very  rarely  indeed  that  he  fails  to  smoke  to  the  end.  In 
almost  all  folk-stories  wherein  the  hero  goes  into  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Trues  for  any  assistance — a  very  common  part 
of  the  plot  of  these  myths — he  is  tried  with  the  weer  first,  to 
see  if  he  be  enough  of  a  man  for  it  to  be  worth  the  while 
of  the  Trues  to  attend  to  his  case.  Sometimes  the  trial  of 
his  faith  is  long-drawn  and  harrowing  in  its  severity,  but 
it  always  begins  with  the  smoke  test. 


224   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

Refugio  did  bravely.  Very  soon  the  soft  olive  of  his  young 
face  turned  gray ;  but  he  puffed  away  impassively  at  the  pun- 
gent reed  until  he  had  finished  the  last  whiff. 

"  Ah-t'it-mee-hee  !  He  w^ins  his  course  !  "  said  the  first  as- 
sistant shaman.  Then,  with  prayers  by  all,  the  cleansing 
with  warm  water  was  given  Refugio,  and  he  was  bidden  to 
stand  erect,  while  the  master  of  ceremonies  said  encourag- 
ingly :  "  So  far,  you  show  that  you  will  follow  our  road." 

Standing,  now,  the  lad  was  ordered  to  make  a  prayer  to 
all  the  Trues — no  small  task,  since  their  number  is  legion 
and  they  must  be  addressed  only  in  the  proper  order  of  their 
rank.  Whenever  Refugio  stumbled  or  was  at  a  loss,  the  first 
assistant  prompted  him  •  and  he  had  to  go  over  and  over 
that  enormous  list  until  he  knew  it  perfectly. 

Now  he  was  made  to  sit  down  upon  his  moccasins,  with 
his  knees  drawn  up  under  his  chin,  to  learn  the  songs  of 
the  order — which  are  of  great  number.  He  began  with 
the  great  song  to  T'hoo-ree-deh,  the  Sun-Father — which  he 
learned  in  less  than  half  the  time  it  afterward  took  me  to 
master  it.  It  is  a  very  important  and  impressive  song,  and 
is  sung  by  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen  whenever  they  escort  the 
cacique  to  a  great  ceremony.  A  translation  of  it  is  as  follows 
(leaving  out  the  many  repetitions  and  meaningless  refrains) : 

THE  SONG  OF  THE  SUN. 

O  Sun,  our  Father, 

Sun-Man, 

Sun-Commander, 

Father,  a  prayer-stick  we  tie. 


FINISHING  AN  INDIAN  BOY.  225 

Father,  on  the  road  stand  ready ; 
Father,  take  your  way ; 
Father,  arrive ; 
Father,  come  in ; 
Father,  be  seated. 

The  learning  of  ah1  those  songs  was  a  serious  matter,  and 
Refugio  mastered  only  a  few  that  night.  The  next  day  at 
sundown — after  another  fast — he  resumed  his  labors,  and 
so  on  every  night  until  he  had  all  the  songs  by  heart.  After 
the  last  one  was  learned  came  the  ceremony  of  Tho-a-sJmrj  the 
Receiving.  The  boy  stood  with  bowed  head  in  the  center  of 
the  room,  while  the  master  of  ceremonies  gave  him  the  cere- 
monial embrace — putting  his  right  arm  over  Refugio's  left 
shoulder,  and  his  left  arm  under  Refugio's  right — and  prayed 
that  all  the  Trues  would  bless  the  new  Cum-pa-huit-la-wid- 
deh.  Then  Refugio  was  embraced  in  turn  by  his  medicine- 
father  and  all  the  other  members,  and  was  given  to  drink  of 
P*ah-cuin-f?ah,  the  Sacred  Water — a  secret  mixture  which 
has  a  sweet  smell  but  no  taste. 

Now  came  the  last  severe  test  of  Refugio's  faith.  He  was 
seated,  no  longer  in  front  of,  but  in,  the  semicircle  of  Cum- 
pa-huit-la-wen,  who  sat  solemnly  with  their  official  bows  and 
arrows  in  their  hands.  For  all  secular  purposes  the  Indians 
now  use  the  latest  and  best  fire-arms ;  but  only  bows  and 
arrows  can  be  admitted  to  religious  ceremonials.  The  oldest 
member  of  the  lodge  began  to  recite  the  history  and  customs 
of  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen,  from  the  very  beginning,  when 
mankind  came  out  from  the  Black  Lake  of  Tears,  down  to 
the  present  day.  For  forty-nine  hours  this  recital  was  con- 


226   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

tinned  without  rest,  the  elder  shamans  taking  turns  in  tell- 
ing ;  and  all  that  weary  time  the  boy  had  to  keep  awake  and 
intent,  answering  at  the  proper  points  "  Tab-koon-nam — is 
that  so  ? n  Once,  when  he  nodded,  the  nearest  man  gave  him 
a  sharp  punch  in  the  ribs  with  the  end  of  his  bow. 

When  Refugio  had  passed  this  last  ordeal  with  credit,  he 
was  again  embraced,  and  the  official  announcement  was  made 
that  he  was  now  a  full  Cum-pa-huit-la-wid-deh.  Had  he 
failed  in  any  of  these  tests — so  hard  upon  the  endurance  of 
a  young  boy — he  would  have  been  told  to  "take  the  heart 
of  a  man"  (be  brave)  and  try  again;  and  the  second  trial 
would  have  been  given  him  in  a  few  days.  The  neophyte's 
struggles  with  his  sickness  and  sleepiness  are  sometimes  very 
comical;  but  the  men  never  smile  at  him — indeed,  their 
treatment  of  him  is  invariably  very  kind,  as  is  their  conduct 
toward  children  under  all  circumstances. 

Refugio  was  now  technically  "  finished  "  or  graduated,  but 
his  tasks  were  by  no  means  done.  He  has  before  him  a  life- 
time of  hard  and  patient  study,  infinite  practice,  and  fre- 
quent self-denial.  To  acquire  that  marvelous  legerdemain 
which  gives  the  medicine-men  their  chief  prestige  is  a  matter 
of  years  of  persevering  practice.  He  will  have,  too,  to  go 
through  innumerable  fasts — some  of  them  for  as  long  as 
eight  days — and  many  other  mortifications  of  the  flesh.  The 
life  of  a  medicine-man  is  as  far  as  possible  from  an  easy  one. 
The  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of  the  whole  pueblo — here 
nearly  twelve  hundred  souls — rests  upon  his  shoulders ;  and 
at  the  cost  of  his  own  comfort  and  health  he  must  secure 


FINISHING  AN  INDIAN  BOY.  227 

blessings  for  his  people  and  avert  all  ill  from  them.  His 
rewards  are  very  few,  and  entirely  disproportionate,  except 
the  universal  respect  which  he  commands. 

Refugio,  by  the  way,  has  now  earned  the  proud  privilege 
of  smoking.  He  often  comes  to  me  for  the  wherewithal  to 
roll  the  little  brown  cigarettes  of  the  country  in  his  slender 
fingers.  How  rare  a  privilege  this  is  for  so  young  a  boy, 
under  the  rigid  Pueblo  etiquette,  you  will  understand  better 
when  I  have  told  you  something  about  their  notions  on  the 
subject  of  smoking. 


XVIII. 

THE  PRAYING  SMOKE. 

|HE  use  of  the  pipe  of  peace  by  the  Indians  of 
the  East,  who  have  disappeared  before  the  el- 
bowing of  our  ancestors  the  earth-hungry,  is 
familiar  to  every  reader ;  but  few  are  aware  how 
widespread  is  still  the  importance  of  smoking 
among  the  surviving  tribes  of  the  continent.  In  the  south- 
west, where  the  Indian  has  held  his  own  since  the  more  mer- 
ciful Spanish  conquest — for  the  real  history  of  later  days 
proves  that  the  Spaniards  were  not  the  merciless  brutes  they 
were  so  long  termed — the  calumet  had  never  any  real  place, 
though  a  few  stone  pipes  have  been  found  here.  The  cigar- 
ette is  the  official  form  of  the  weed,  and  its  importance  is 
surprising.  In  religion,  in  war,  in  the  chase,  and  in  society 
it  occupies  a  highly  responsible  position.  It  is  more  to  the 
Indian  than  is  salt  to  the  Arab — equal  as  a  hospitable  bond, 
and  extending  to  countless  other  uses  to  which  the  Arabian 
salt  is  never  promoted. 

I  should  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  saying  these  things 
of  the  abominable  little  white  cylinders  familiar  to  the  East. 
Neither  Indian  nor  Mexican  has  quite  fallen  to  those.  The 


THE  PRAYING  SMOKE.  229 

cigar ro  of  the  southwest  is  not  a  pestilence.  Its  component 
parts  are  a  pinch  of  granulated  tobacco,  a  bit  of  sweet-corn 
husk,  or  (specially  made)  brown  paper  and  a  twist  of  the 
wrist. 

In  my  studies  in  New  Mexico  I  have  been  much  interested 
in  the  sacred  smoke.  It  recurs  everywhere.  There  is  hardly 
a  folk-story  among  the  Pueblo  Indians  in  which  it  does  not 
figure  prominently.  Not  a  prayer  is  offered  nor  a  ceremonial 
conducted  without  its  aid.  But  for  it  the  land  would  be 
burned  up  with  drought,  and  the  population  harpied  away 
bodily  by  evil  spirits.  No  one  thinks  of  being  born  or  dying 
without  the  intervention  of  the  cigarette,  and  to  all  the  in- 
termediate phases  of  life  it  is  equally  indispensable.  And  as 
befits  so  vital  an  article  of  faith,  it  is  surrounded  by  rigid 
restrictions.  Thus  much  is  common  also  to  the  Mexican 
population.  A  Mexican  boy  would  as  soon  think  of  putting 
his  head  in  the  fire  as  of  smoking  before  his  parents,  if  he 
dared  smoke  at  all — which  is  very  seldom.  Many  a  time  on 
a  weary  march  I  have  offered  the  bit  of  corn-husk  and  the 
pinch  of  tobacco  t6  an  old  man,  who  accepted  gratefully,  and 
another  to  his  grown-up  son,  who  politely  but  firmly  declined, 
though  I  could  see  he  was  dying  for  a  smoke ;  and  he  would 
deny  himself  till  night,  when  he  could  sneak  off  up  the  canon 
with  the  precious  luxuries  and  grunt  with  joy  as  he  puffed 
away  in  loneliness  and  gloom.  And  many  a  time  I  have  seen 
a  full-grown  man,  with  mature  children  of  his  own,  burn  his 
fingers  in  hastily  pinching  out  his  cigarette  at  the  unexpected 
approach  of  his  aged  father  or  mother.  Mexican  women 
20 


230   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

may  smoke  after  their  marriage,  but  of  course  with  the  same 
restriction. 

With  the  Indians  the  lines  are  more  closely  drawn.  A 
woman  is  not  to  think  of  smoking.  I  have  known  a  case 
where  an  Indian  girl,  who  had  learned  this  and  other  bad 
habits  from  the  superior  race,  was  caught  by  her  parents 
with  a  cigarette  in  her  mouth ;  and  her  tongue  was  slit  at 
the  tip  as  a  warning  against  such  unladylike  tricks.  The 
Pueblo  lad  dare  not  smoke  even  by  himself  before  he  is 
twenty-five  years  old,  unless  he  has  established  his  warlike 
prowess  by  taking  a  scalp,*  or  has  been  given  "  the  freedom 
of  the  smoke  "  upon  acquiring  full  membership  in  one  of  the 
branches  of  medicine-men,  like  Befugio.  And  even  then  he 
must  not  smoke  in  presence  of  his  parents  or  any  one  who  is 
his  senior,  without  their  direct  permission,  which  is  very  sel- 
dom given. 

In  all  Pueblo  dealings  with  their  brethren  and  other  In- 
dians the  cigarette  is  a  flag  of  truce,  a  covenant,  a  bond 
whose  sanctity  was  never  violated.  When  a  Pueblo  meets 
any  heathen  Indian — for  all  Pueblos  rank  themselves  as 
Christians — his  first  act  is  to  toss  him  the  little  guaje  of 
tobacco  with  a  corn-husk.  He  never  hands  it.  If  the 
stranger  pick  up  the  offering,  there  is  unbreakable  peace 
between  them,  and  they  sit  down  and  smoke  the  sacred 
smoke  in  amity,  though  their  respective  people  may  be  at 
war.  If  an  Indian  went  out  to  slay  his  bitterest  foe  and 

*  Of  course  it  is  how  a  great  while  since  they  have  earned  the  privi- 
lege thus. 


THE  PRAYING  SMOKE.  231 

in  a  thoughtless  moment  accepted  a  cigarette  from  him,  he 
would  have  to  forego  the  coveted  scalp. 

It  is  only  recently  that  I  have  been  able  to  settle  the 
mooted  question  whether  the  Indians  of  the  southwest 
smoked  before  the  Spaniards  came,  three  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago,  for  these  Indians  did  not  have  tobacco  until  after 
the  conquest.  This  late  but  conclusive  evidence  establishes 
the  fact  that  they  did  smoke.  The  ancient  substitutes  for 
tobacco  were  two  herbs  known  in  Tigua  as  ku-a-rfo  and  p>ee- 
en-hleh.  They  are  much  more  aromatic  than  tobacco,  but 
do  not,  as  the  Indians  observe,  "make  drunk  so  much"  as 
our  weed.  I  have  been  unable  to  get  green  specimens  of  the 
plants  for  classification.  The  dried  leaves  are  brought  great 
distances  from  certain  spots  in  the  mountains. 

In  the  primitive  cigarette,  which  the  Tiguans  call  weer,  no 
paper  was  used,  of  course,  for  this  country  was  then  inno- 
cent of  paper ;  nor  were  corn-husks.  The  weer  was  made  by 
punching  out  the  pith  of  a  reed  common  in  the  Rio  Grande 
valley,  and  ramming  the  hollow  full  of  p'ee-en-hleh  or  ku-a- 
ree.  All  ceremonial  cigarettes  are  so  made  still;  for  the 
brown  paper  or  oja  smoke  is  "  not  good n  for  religious  mat- 
ters. The  reed,  however,  may  be  filled  with  tobacco  instead 
of  the  older  weeds  and  still  be  efficacious. 

Himself  an  altogether  matchless  observer,  the  Indian  is 
equally  adept  at  eluding  observation.  If  he  has  a  secret 
duty  to  perform  when  you  are  around,  he  will  do  it  be- 
fore your  very  face  with  such  sang-froid  and  such  wizardry 
sleight  of  hand  that  you  will  never  dream  what  he  is  doing, 


232   SOME  STRANGE  COENEES  OF  OUE  COUNTEY. 

or  that  he  is  doing  anything  out  of  the  ordinary.  I  had 
watched  the  sacred-smoke  prayer  ten  thousand  times  with- 
out the  remotest  suspicion  of  it,  and  my  observation  was  nei- 
ther indifferent  nor  without  the  sharpening  which  association 
with  Indians  must  give  the  dullest  senses.  It  was  only  after 
a  hint,  and  when  I  came  one  day  to  see — myself  unseen— 
an  old  Indian  lighting  his  cigarette,  and  noticed  that  each 
of  the  first  six  puffs  was  sent  in  a  different  direction,  that  I 
began  to  suspect  a  ceremony  and  to  watch  for  further  proof. 
Then  I  saw  that  every  smoker  did  the  same  thing,  though, 
when  in  company,  with  an  infinite  precaution  which  made  it 
almost  imperceptible.  The  world  is  full  of  evil  spirits — 
nothing  else  is  so  ever-present  in  the  Indian  mind  as  the 
fear  of  witches — and  these  must  be  propitiated  as  well  as  the 
Trues.  This  cardinal  smoking  at  the  outset  of  the  cigarette 
is  both  an  offering  to  the  Trues  and  exorcism  of  witches. 

It  is  the  collective  smoke  of  the  sacred  weer  that  forms  the 
rain-clouds  and  brings  the  rain.  Tobacco  smoke  has  not  this 
virtue.  In  the  spring  medicine-making,  when  the  year  is  to 
be  foretold,  and  at  any  special  medicine-making  that  may  be 
had  to  stave  off  a  threatened  drought,  the  whole  junta  indus- 
triously smokes  weer,  to  help  with  its  cloud-compelling  vapor 
in  the  answer  of  their  own  prayers  for  rain.  Since  in  the 
preparation  for  one  of  these  ceremonials  the  medicine-men 
have  to  shut  themselves  up  in  the  medicine-house  for  from 
four  to  eight  days — never  going  out,  nor  eating,  nor  moving 
from  their  appointed  seats,  and  with  no  relief  save  drinking 
water  and  smoking — their  united  efforts  in  that  time  make 


THE  PRAYING  SMOKE.  233 

a  cloud  surely  sufficient  in  volume,  whatever  may  be  its 
capacities  for  precipitation. 

I  have  already  told  you  of  the  "drawing-dance"  before 
every  hunt,  wherein  the  weer  is  smoked  to  blind  the  eyes 
of  the  game  j  and  that  in  the  hunt  itself  a  steady  smoking 
is  kept  up  by  the  shamans  of  the  chase  for  the  same  pur- 
pose. The  weer  also  figures  in  all  medicine-makings,  to  dispel 
witches  and  for  other  purposes.  In  looking  into  the  magic 
cajete,  the  Father  of  All  Medicine  stoops  and  blows  the  sacred 
smoke  slowly  across  the  water  in  that  important  bowl,  and  it 
is  then  that  he  can  see  in  that  curious  mirror  (so  he  says)  all 
that  is  going  on  in  the  world.  The  manner  in  which  the  film 
of  vapor  hovers  upon  the  water  or  curls  up  from  it  in  hasty 
spirals  indicates  whether  the  year  will  be  calm  or  windy. 
This  smoke  mirror  is  also  particularly  used  in  the  detec- 
tion of  witches,  whom  it  reveals  in  their  evil  tricks,  however 
hidden. 

When  one  is  sick  the  male  head  of  the  family  wraps  a  few 
pinches  of  tobacco  in  a  corn-husk,  ties  the  packet  with  a  corn- 
husk  string,  and  with  this  offering  goes  to  the  medicine-man 
and  requests  him  to  come  and  cure  the  invalid.  And  it  is  a 
sovereign  fee — a  shaman  whose  services  you  cannot  hire  by 
whatsoever  present  of  money  or  valuables  cannot  refuse  your 
request  if  you  come  to  him  with  an  offering  of  the  weed. 
This  certainly  indicates  a  freedom  from  avarice  which  the 
professional  men  of  more  civilized  races  do  not  always  imi- 
tate, for  the  Indian  is  as  fond  of  his  family  as  are  any  of  us, 
and  would  pay  his  last  pony  and  last  silver  necklace  for  the 


234   SOME  STEANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

curing  of  his  sick  if  it  were  demanded.  Indeed,  the  whole 
shaman  code  of  ethics  is  a  very  creditable  one. 

The  ceremonial  weer  dare  not  be  lighted  with  a  match  or 
at  a  common  blaze.  It  can  be  ignited  only  from  the  sacred 
fire  in  the  estufa,  a  coal  from  the  cacique's  house,  a  flint  and 
steel,  or  the  ancient  fire-drill,  which  is  here  a  dry,  round  stick 
fitting  tightly  into  a  cavity  in  the  end  of  another,  and  re- 
volved rapidly  from  right  to  left  (even  in  so  trivial  a  matter 
as  this  the  wrong  order  must  be  avoided)  until  the  hollow  is 
sufficiently  hot  to  ignite  the  primitive  tinder  under  a  coaxing 
breath.  Very  old  men  who  are  True  Believers  still  dislike 
to  light  even  their  pleasure  cigarettes  in  the  suspicious  mod- 
ern ways,  and  will,  if  possible,  pluck  a  coal  in  their  skinny 
fingers  to  start  the  precious  smoke. 

When  a  person  dies  here,  the  medicine-men,  who  come  to 
insure  the  safety  of  the  departed  on  his  four  days'  journey  to 
the  other  world,  perform  very  intricate  and  mysterious  rites, 
very  largely  designed  to  hide  his  trail  from  the  evil  spirits, 
who  would  otherwise  be  sure  to  follow  and  harass  him,  and 
would  very  likely  succeed  in  switching  him  off  altogether 
from  the  happy  land  and  into  "  the  place  where  devils  are." 
Among  other  things  the  body  is  surrounded  during  these 
four  days  with  the  tracks  of  the  road-runner  *  to  lead  the 
witches  on  a  false  trail,  and  the  sacred  smoke  is  continuously 
blown  about  that  they  may  not  see  which  way  the  departed 

went. 

*  A  small  pheasant. 


XIX. 

THE  DANCE  OP  THE  SACRED  BARK. 

E  would  hardly  look  for  refinements  of  language 
among  Indians,  but,  like  many  of  our  other 
notions  about  them,  this  is  not  fully  correct. 
They  do  use  euphemisms,  and  invent  pleasant- 
sounding  phrases  for  unpleasant  things.  One 
of  the  best  examples  of  this  is  the  manner  in  which  they 
speak  of  one  of  their  most  savage  customs.  They  hardly  ever 
talk  of  scalps  or  scalping ;  instead  of  those  harsh  words  they 
have  very  innocent  paraphrases.  Among  my  Tigua  neigh- 
bors this  ghastly  trophy  is  spoken  of  as  "the  sacred  hair," 
or  "the  oak-bark,"  or  "the  sacred  bark" — all  very  natural 
Indian  metaphors.  An  important  folk-story  of  Isleta  relates 
how  two  boys  who  smoked  before  they  had  proved  themselves 
men  were  reproved  by  their  grandfather,  a  wise  old  medicine- 
man. He  told  them  that  before  they  could  be  allowed  to 
smoke  they  must  go  to  the  Eagle  Feather  Mountains  (the 
Manzano  range),  and  bring  him  some  of  the  "bark  of  the 
oak."  The  youths  went  out  in  all  innocence  and  peeled  the 
bark  from  several  trees,  and  were  greatly  chagrined  when 
their  grandfather  sternly  told  them  to  go  and  try  again.  At 


236   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

last  a  wise  mole  solved  the  riddle  for  them,  and  directed  them 
against  a  band  of  marauding  Navajos,  from  whose  heads  the 
boys  got  the  "  bark n  which  entitled  them  thereafter  to  the 
privilege  of  smoking. 

It  is  a  good  many  years  since  my  kindly  "friends  and 
fellow-citizens"  of  the  pueblo  of  Isleta  have  taken  a  scalp, 
and  they  were  never  universal  snatchers  of  "  the  sacred  hair." 
All  their  traditions  assure  me  that  they  never  did  have  the 
habit  of  scalping  Americans,  Mexicans,  or  Pueblo  Indians — 
no  Christians,  in  fact — but  only  the  heathen  savages  who 
surrounded  them,  and  for  so  many  bloody  centuries  harassed 
and  murdered  ceaselessly  these  quiet  village  people.  More- 
over, it  has  always  been  against  their  rule  to  scalp  the  women 
of  even  these  barbarous  foes. 

Some  eighteen  years  must  have  gone  by  since  the  last 
scalps  were  brought  to  Isleta.  One  of  them  came  at  the 
belt  of  my  pleasant  next-door  neighbor,  Bartolo  Jojola.  He 
is  one  of  the  official  Delight-Makers,  or  Ko-sha-re,  and  fully 
competent  to  hold  his  own  with  any  civilized  clown  of  the 
ring.  A  band  of  Comanches  from  over  the  mountains  to  the 
east  stole  silently  into  the  pueblo  one  stormy  midnight  to 
steal  what  stock  they  might.  A  lot  of  horses  were  in  a 
strong  corral  of  palisades,  whose  tops  were  bound  with  iron- 
like  ropes  of  rawhide.  One  Comanche  climbed  quietly  into 
the  inclosure,  with  the  end  of  a  lasso  in  his  hand.  He  at 
that  end,  and  a  companion  outside,  sawed  the  rope  back  and 
forth  until  the  rawhides  were  cut.  Then  several  posts  were 
uprooted,  the  horses  were  led  out,  and  off  went  the  robbers 


THE  DANCE  OF   THE  SACRED  BARK.  237 

and  their  booty  without  arousing  any  one.  But  at  daybreak 
— for  my  friends  are  very  early  risers — the  alarm  was  given. 
A  posse  was  organized  and  followed  the  robbers  across  the 
Rio  Grande,  across  the  twenty-mile  plateau  east  of  us,  and 
over  the  ten-thousand-foot  Manzano  Mountains.  At  last 
they  overtook  the  raiders  on  the  edge  of  the  great  plains, 
and  there  was  a  fierce  fight.  The  Comanches,  who  were,  as  a 
tribe,  the  best  horsemen  America  has  ever  seen,  resorted  to 
their  favorite  tactics  of  savage  and  repeated  cavalry  charges. 
The  Isletenos,  though  admirable  riders,  were  no  match  on 
horseback  for  these  Centaurs  of  the  plains,  so  they  dis- 
mounted and  received  the  charge  on  foot.  So  effective  was 
the  fire  of  their  flint-locks  that  the  Comanches  took  to  flight. 
The  Isletenos  recovered  the  stolen  horses,  besides  capturing 
many  new  ones  and  a  dozen  scalps. 

Since  then  there  have  been  none  of  these  ghastly  trophies 
brought  to  Isleta ;  and  yet  the  scalp  plays  an  important  part 
in  the  ceremonials  of  the  village,  and  in  a  secret  niche  in  the 
wall  of  the  dark,  round  estufa  rests  a  priceless  horde  of  the 
sacred  "  barks,"  which  are  still  taken  out  and  danced  over  at 
their  due  season. 

The  Indian  does  not  take  a  scalp  through  cruelty,  but 
just  as  civilized  soldiers  fight  for  and  preserve  the  captured 
battle-flags  of  the  enemy,  as  trophies  and  proofs  of  prowess 
in  war.  Not  being  refined  enough  to  see  the  barbarity  of 
taking  a  physical  trophy,  he  does  veiy  much  what  civilized 
nations  did  not  many  centuries  ago,  when  ghastly  heads  on 
pikes  were  no  uncommon  sight ;  and  he  takes  it  chiefly  be- 


238   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

cause  he  believes  that  with  it  the  valor  and  skill  of  the  former 
possessor  become  his  own. 

The  scalp  is  taken  by  making  a  rough  circle  of  slashes 
around  the  skull,  and  then  tearing  off  the  broad  patch  of 
skin  and  hair  by  main  force.  It  is  a  very  dreadful  opera- 
tion, never  to  be  forgotten  by  those  who  have  once  seen  it. 
The  trophy  must  be  cured  by  hi™  who  took  it,  which  he  pro- 
ceeds to  do  with  the  utmost  care.  Many  magical  powers  are 
supposed  to  reside  in  the  scalp.  Even  a  third  party  who 
touches  it,  by  accident  or  design,  becomes  possessed  of  some 
of  its  virtues,  though  he  is  thereby  also  forced  to  certain 
temporary  self-denials. 

When  a  war-party  returns  to  the  pueblo  with  scalps  it  is 
a  very  serious  matter.  They  cannot  enter  the  town,  nor  can 
their  anxious  families  come  out  to  meet  them.  If  they  have 
been  westward  after  the  Apaches,  Navajos,  or  Utes,  they 
make  a  solemn  halt  on  the  center  of  the  Hill  of  the  Wind,  a 
volcanic  peak  twelve  miles  west  of  here ;  and  if  to  the  east 
after  Comanches,  they  stop  at  a  corresponding  point  on  their 
return  on  the  east  side  of  the  Rio  Grande.  There  they  camp 
with  the  scalps,  and  send  one-half  their  number  forward  to 
the  pueblo,  where  they  dare  not  go  to  their  homes,  but  repair 
at  once  to  the  cacique,  and  make  their  report  to  him.  For 
fourteen  days  the  half  who  are  out  on  the  hills  keep  their 
camp,  sending  out  scouts  daily  to  the  lookouts  in  the  lava 
peaks  to  guard  against  the  approach  of  an  enemy ;  and  the 
half  who  have  come  to  town  are  secluded  in  the  estuf a,  fast- 
ing and  forbidden  any  intercourse  with  their  families.  At 


THE  DANCE  OF  THE   SACRED  BARK.  239 

the  end  of  this  two  weeks  the  warriors  who  have  been  shut 
up  in  the  estufa  march  out  and  relieve  their  companions  in 
camp,  staying  there  with  the  scalps  while  the  others  come  in 
to  fast  in  the  estufa.  After  fourteen  days  more  the  men  in 
camp  start  toward  town,  those  from  the  estufa  meet  them 
half-way,  and  all  enter  the  pueblo  singing  "man-songs" 
(songs  of  war),  and  carry  the  scalps  first  to  the  cacique  and 
then  to  the  estufa. 

Then  begins  another  period  of  fasting  and  self -purification 
—twelve  days  for  those  who  have  touched  a  scalp  in  any 
way,  and  eight  days  for  those  who  have  not.  Every  act  is 
regulated  with  the  most  minute  and  scrupulous  care.  The 
estufa  is  always  surrounded  with  the  utmost  sacredness,  and 
its  etiquette  is  more  punctilious  than  anything  we  know  of. 
The  estufa  is  a  building  by  itself,  round  and  low,  with  a 
diameter  of  from  forty  to  fifty  feet.  It  has  no  doors  in  the 
sides,  but  is  reached  by  ladders  from  ground  to  roof,  and 
from  the  roof  by  another  ladder  down  through  a  trap-door 
to  the  interior.  The  interior  of  the  estufa  is  a  plain,  circular 
room,  with  walls  bare,  save  for  a  few  antlers  and  rude  paint- 
ings of  the  sacred  animals.  One  must  not  forget  himself  in 
entering  the  estufa.  Beaching  the  roof,  he  must  approach 
the  trap-door  from  the  west  side,  back  down  the  ladder,  turn 
to  his  right  when  at  the  bottom,  and  make  a  complete  circuit 
of  the  room,  a'  foot  from  the  wall,  ere  he  takes  his  seat  in  the 
semicircle  around  the  sacred  fire.  If  he  were  thoughtlessly 
to  turn  to  the  left  in  any  of  these  maneuvers,  it  would  be 
sure  death ;  for  the  Trues  would  let  loose  on  him  the  ghost 


240   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

of  the  scalped  man,  who,  clad  only  in  a  dark  blue  breech- 
clout  and  with  a  lasso  coiled  over  his  shoulder,  would 
and  touch  him,  whereupon  he  would  fall  dead !  When 
come  to  leave  the  estuf  a  they  approach  the  foot  of  the  lad- 
der from  the  left,  and  on  reaching  the  roof  turn  to  the  right, 
walk  around  the  roof,  and  finally  descend  to  the  ground 
backward,  in  hard-earned  safety. 

The  seat  of  the  cacique  is  at  the  west  side  of  the  fireplace ; 
that  of  his  first  assistant  opposite  him  on  the  east,  and  the 
acolytes  fill  the  semicircle  between.  In  a  semicircle  around 
these  are  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen,  who  are  guards  of  the  es- 
tuf a  ;  and  in  successive  semicircles  come  all  the  rest  of  the 
audience.  All  face  away  from  the  fire  until  the  cacique  rises 
and  speaks,  when  all  face  toward  it,  and  so  remain  through 
the  rest  of  the  session.  This  sacred  fire  is  made  only  by  the 
Hoo-mah-koon,  and  must  be  started  with  only  the  sacred 
fire-drill  or  flint  and  steel.  Most  of  the  men  present  smoke, 
but  never  use  matches.  Their  cigarettes  must  be  lighted  only 
at  the  sacred  fire. 

After  the  days  of  preparation  in  this  punctilious  spot,  the 
scalp-takers  and  other  warriors  emerge  to  hold  the  Tu-a- 
fu-ar,  or  "  Mad  Dance,"  in  commemoration  of  their  victory. 
The  dance — which  is  never  allowed  to  be  witnessed  by 
strangers — is  held  in  a  small  square  near  the  estuf  a.  The 
dancers  are  formed  in  two  lines,  facing  each  other,  with 
alternate  men  and  women.  The  men  are  in  their  war  paint, 
and  each  carries  a  bow  and  arrow  in  his  left  hand,  and  in  his 
right  a  single  arrow  with  the  point  upward.  The  women 


THE  DANCE   OF   THE   SACRED  BARK.  241 

wear  their  gayest  dresses  and  silver  ornaments,  but  carry 
nothing  in  their  hands.  All  the  dancers  move  in  perfect 
rhythm  to  the  monotonous  chant  of  the  singers  and  the 
thump,  thump  of  the  big  aboriginal  drum.  The  chant  is  a 
metrical  account  of  the  battle  and  the  manner  in  which  the 
scalps  were  taken. 

As  soon  as  the  dance  is  fairly  under  way,  the  "  Bending 
Woman"  makes  her  appearance.  She  is  the  official  custo- 
dian of  the  scalps ;  has  taken  them  from  their  sealed  hiding- 
place  in  the  estufa,  and  brushed  them  carefully  with  a  sacred 
broom  made  in  the  mountains  j  and  now  carries  them  in  a 
buckskin  on  her  back,  bending  forward  under  the  weight  of 
their  importance.  As  the  dancers  perform  their  evolutions 
she  walks  slowly  and  solemnly  up  and  down  between  their 
lines  with  her  precious  burden. 

This  Mad  Dance  lasts  four  entire  days.  About  seven 
o'clock  on  the  evening  of  the  last  day  comes  Khur-shii-ar, 
the  concluding  Round  Dance.  A  big  bonfire  is  lighted,  and 
the  two  parallel  lines  of  dancers  deploy  around  it  until  they 
form  a  large  circle,  the  principal  singers  dropping  out  of  the 
ranks,  and  clustering  around  the  drummer  beside  the  fire. 

The  song  of  the  Round  Dance  is  one  of  the  prettiest  of  all 
sung  by  the  Pueblos.  It  really  is  melodious  and  "  catching." 
At  the  end  of  every  phrase  the  effect  is  heightened  by  a  cho- 
rus of  high  yells,  in  imitation  of  the  war-whoop  or  "  enemy- 
yell."  Some  of  the  older  dancers,  to  whom  the  ceremony 
recalls  real  memories  of  their  own,  add  doleful  wails  like 
those  of  the  wounded.  The  whole  performance  is  weird,  but 
21 


242   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

not  savage  seeming.  It  has  become  merely  a  ritual — not  a 
rehearsal  of  ferocity. 

The  chant  and  the  dancing  are  kept  up  all  night,  until  sun- 
rise ends  the  celebration.  All  then  repair  to  the  estuf  a ;  the 
Bending  Woman  puts  the  scalps  back  in  their  niche,  covers 
it  with  a  flat  slab  of  stone,  and  seals  it  over  with  mud. 

The  chief  of  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen,  after  a  solemn  silence, 

says,  "  Brothers,  friends,  a  road  is  given  you  "  (that  is,  "  You 

are  free  to  depart "),  and  all  file  out,  free  to  break  their  long 

.  abstinence,  and  enjoy  themselves  until  the  war-captain  shall 

again  summon  them  to  the  field. 

Now  that  no  fresh  scalps  have  been  acquired  for  so  long, 
the  old  ones  are  still  brought  forth  at  a  fixed  time,  and  do 
duty,  as  the  inspiration  of  the  T'u-a-fii-ar.  This  dance,  how- 
ever, like  many  of  the  other  old  customs,  is  not  so  well  kept 
up  in  Isleta  as  in  some  of  the  more  remote  pueblos  which 
have  not  been  so  much  affected  by  civilization.  The  T'u-a- 
fii-ar  which  I  witnessed  here  in  the  fall  of  1891  was  the  first 
the  Isletenos  had  had  in  four  years,  though  it  should  be  held 
yearly.  There  was  another  in  1892. 


XX. 

DOCTORING  THE  YEAR. 

ITH  the  Pueblo  Indians  the  sick  are  not  the 
only  ones  in  need  of  doctoring.  The  medicine- 
men— those  most  important  of  Indian  person- 
ages— have  for  patients  not  only  sick  people 
but  well  ones,  and  even  the  crops  and  the  whole 
year's  success.  It  would  seem  to  a  civilized  physician  a 
ridiculous  affair  to  prescribe  for  the  seasons  and  to  feel  the 
pulse  of  the  corn-fields  j  but  my  aboriginal  neighbors  see  no 
incongruity  in  it.  On  the  contrary,  they  deem  this  profes- 
sional treatment  of  inanimate  things  as  essential  a  matter  as 
the  care  of  the  sick,  and  would  have  no  hopes  at  all  for  the 
success  of  any  year  which  was  not  duly  provided  for  at  the 
start  by  a  most  solemn  dose  of  "  medicine." 

"Medicine"  to  an  Indian  has  not  merely  the  restricted 
sense  in  which  we  use  it.  Wahr  (the  word  used  by  the  Tig- 
uas)  means  almost  every  influence  of  every  sort  that  affects 
the  human  race.  The  Indian  has  no  idea,  of  blind  chance  or 
unintelligent  forces.  To  him  everything  is  sentient ;  every 
influence  which  is  agreeable  in  its  effects  is  a  good  spirit  or 


244   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

the  work  of  a  good  spirit ;  and  every  influence  which  harms 
him  is,  or  comes  from,  an  evil  spirit.  All  these  influences 
are  "medicines;"  and  so  also,  in  a  secondary  sense,  are  the 
material  agencies  used  to  invoke  or  check  them.  The  med- 
icine-men, therefore,  are  people  with  supposed  supernatural 
powers,  who  use  good  influences  (either  visible  remedies  or 
spiritual  means)  to  bring  welfare  to  the  people  and  avert  evil 
from  them.  A  medicine-man  has  also  power  over  the  bad 
influences  j  but  if  he  were  to  use  that  power  to  harm  people 
he  would  be  said  to  "have  the  evil  road,"  and  would  be 
regarded  no  longer  as  a  medicine-man,  but  as  a  witch — for 
the  obligation  to  do  good  deeds  only  is  doubly  strong  upon 
those  who  have  powers  not  given  to  other  men. 

There  are  in  the  pueblo  of  Isleta  countless  medicine-mak- 
ings, little  and  great,  general  -and  special ;  but  the  two  most 
important  ones  of  the  year  are  the  Spring  Medicine-Making 
(or  Medicine-Dance,  as  it  is  often  called)  to  make  the  season 
prosperous,  and  the  Medicine-Dance  of  thanksgiving  to  the 
good  spirits,  after  the  fall  crops  are  harvested. 

The  Spring  Medicine-Making,  which  is  called  in  this  lan- 
guage Tu-shee-wim,  is  held  generally  about  the  middle  of 
March,  when  the  mild  winter  of  the  Kio  Grande  valley  is 
practically  done,  and  it  is  time  to  begin  opening  the  great 
irrigating  ditches,  and  other  spring  work.  Every  smallest 
detail  is  conducted  with  the  utmost  secrecy  j  and  gentle  as 
these  people  are,  the  safety  of  an  American  who  should  be 
caught  spying  upon  any  of  these  secrets  would  be  very 
small  indeed.  For  personal  reasons  it  is  impossible  for  me 


DOCTORING  THE  YEAR.  245 

to  divulge  how  I  learned  the  following  facts,  but  I  can  per- 
sonally vouch  for  all  of  them. 

When  it  is  felt  to  be  time  to  forecast  and  propitiate  the 
year,  the  first  step  in  the  matter  is  taken  by  the  Chief  Cap- 
tain of  War  and  his  seven  sub-captains.  They  come  together 
at  his  house  5  and  he  sends  out  the  sub-captains  to  notify  all 
the  different  branches  of  medicine-men — of  which  there  are 
many.  Each  branch  of  medicine  sends  a  delegate  to  the 
meeting,  which  proceeds  to  consider  the  best  manner  of  tak- 
ing the  first  formal  step — the  presentation  of  the  sacred  corn- 
meal  to  the  Kah-ahm  Ch'oom-nin,  the  two  Heads  of  All  Medi- 
cine. The  matter  is  fully  discussed,  and  is  finally  put  to  vote 
of  the  meeting.  As  a  rule  the  Chief  Captain  of  War  is  chosen 
for  this  most  important  mission— unless  he  chances  to  be 
very  ignorant  of  the  necessary  ceremonial  songs,  in  which 
rare  event  one  of  the  sub-captains  is  selected. 

On  the  day  after  this  meeting — which  can  be  held  only 
after  sundown — the  chosen  war-captain,  with  his  associate 
next  in  rank,  must  perform  the  errand.  During  the  day  the 
wife,  mother,  or  sister  of  the  senior  of  them  carefully  selects 
the  best  ears  from  her  store  of  corn,  and  in  a  dark  room 
grinds  a  handful  into  meal,  on  the  metate  (stone  hand-mill), 
all  the  time  praying  that  the  errand  of  the  sacred  meal  may 
be  successful. 

After  sundown  the  ambassador  wraps  this  bit  of  meal 
carefully  in  a  clean  square  of  corn-husk,  and  ties  the  packet 
with  a  corn-husk  string.  With  this  in  his  right  hand  he 
walks  gravely  to  the  house  of  the  Head  of  All  Medicine. 


246   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

There  are  two  of  these  dignitaries  in  this  pueblo,  one  rep- 
resenting the  Isletenos  proper,  and  the  other  the  Queres* 
colony  here.  They  always  begin  as  members  of  some  special 
medicine  order,  but  are  promoted  by  degrees,  until  they  leave 
their  original  orders  altogether  and  become  the  two  general 
and  supreme  heads  of  all  the  orders.  To  only  one  of  these 
— the  "Father  of  Here" — does  the  embassy  go. 

Entering  the  house,  the  bearer  of  the  meal  and  his  assist- 
ant sit  down  by  the  fire  with  the  Father  of  Here,  smoke 
the  sacred  cigarette  to  ward  off  evil  spirits,  and  talk  awhile 
on  general  matters.  After  a  cigarette  or  two,  the  visitors 
rise  and  pray  to  the  Trues  on  all  sides  to  grant  them  success. 
The  Father  of  Here  of  course  knows  all  the  time  what  is 
coming,  but  pretends  not  to  hear  them  at  all.  Having  fin- 
ished their  prayers,  they  turn  to  address  him  directly,  telling 
him  he  is  desired  to  make  Tu-shee-wim  (medicine  "  for  all  the 
village  ")?  to  see  if  the  year  will  be  good,  and  to  drive  away 
evil  spirits.  Then  the  senior  captain  hands  him  the  packet 
of  sacred  meal,  which  is  always  proffered  and  taken  with  the 
right  hand  only.  For  either  of  them  to  use  the  left  hand 
in  this  (or  any  other)  ceremonial  would  be  sure  death !  As 
long  as  the  visitors  remain,  the  Father  of  Here  must  hold 
the  meal  in  his  hand.  After  they  are  gone,  he  walks  to  the 
house  of  the  Father  of  the  Queres  and  shares  it  with  him— 
unless  it  is  already  too  late  at  night,  in  which  case  he  does 
not  go  until  after  sundown  the  next  day. 

The  morning  after  both  the  Heads  of  All  Medicine  have 
*  Pronounced  Kdy-ress. 


DOCTORING  THE  YEAR.  247 

the  sacred  meal,  they  meet  before  sunrise  at  a  point  in  the 
sand-hills  east  of  the  river.  As  the  sun  comes  up  over  the 
Eagle  Feather  Mountains,  they  pray  to  the  Sun-Father  long 
and  earnestly.  Each  now  holds  the  sacred  meal  in  his  left 
hand,  and  each  as  he  invokes  some  blessing  on  the  people  takes 
with  his  right  hand  a  little  pinch  of  the  meal,  breathes  on  it 
and  tosses  it  toward  the  sun,  until  the  meal  is  all  gone.  They 
pray  that  the  Trues  will  send  abundant  rain,  make  the  crops 
large,  give  plenty  of  grass  for  the  herds,  send  good  health 
to  the  village,  etc.  And  when  the  meal  has  all  been  blown 
away,  they  return  to  the  village  and  summon  together  their 
respective  original  medicine  orders.  With  this  morning  be- 
gin the  eight  days  of  abstinence,  purification,  and  preparation 
for  the  great  event.  Only  the  two  special  branches  of  medi- 
cine-men have  to  keep  this  ceremonial.  The  first  four  days 
are  the  "  Outside  Days,"  when  the  medicine-men  may  move 
about  the  pueblo  and  visit  friends,  but  must  keep  their 
special  fast.  Then  come  the  four  "  Inside  Days,"  and  with 
the  beginning  of  these  the  medicine-men  enter  the  medicine- 
house.  There  each  is  given  a  special  seat,  from  which  he 
must  not  move  until  the  four  days  are  over.  In  front  of 
each  stands  a  tinaja  (jar)  of  water;  and  he  may  drink  as 
much  as  he  chooses,  but  must  not  touch  a  mouthful  of  food 
in  all  those  days,  nor  must  a  ray  of  sunlight  strike  him.  The 
Common  Mother,  Kai-id-deh,  the  wife  of  the  Head  of  All 
Medicine,  is  the  only  other  soul  who  can  enter  that  solemn 
room  •  and  she  sweeps  it,  brings  them  water  and  tobacco  for 
cigarettes,  and  a  sacred  coal  to  light  them.  Day  and  night 


248   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

the  f asters  sit  and  smoke,  the  older  men  rehearsing  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  order  for  the  benefit  of  the  younger,  who  must 
learn  all  these  stories  by  heart.  During  all  this  time,  no 
other  person  dare  even  call  at  the  door.  At  about  ten  o'clock 
in  the  morning  of  the  fourth  Inside  Day,  any  Americans  or 
other  strangers  who  may  chance  to  be  in  town  are  sent  out 
or  shut  up  under  a  good-natured  but  inflexible  sentinel. 
Then  the  coast  is  clear  for  the  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen.  Four 
pairs  of  these  marshals  are  sent  out,  one  pair  to  each  cardinal 
point.  In  passing  through  the  village  they  wear  blankets, 
but  once  outside,  cast  these  off  and  go  running  swiftly,  clad 
only  in  their  moccasins  and  the  breech-clout.  Besides  their 
inseparable  bows  and  arrows — the  insignia  of  their  office — 
each  pair  of  guards  carries  a  single  "prayer-stick"  which  has 
been  made  that  morning  by  the  Head  of  All  Medicine.  This 
prayer-stick  is  a  bit  of  wood  about  the  size  of  a  lead-pencil, 
with  certain  magical  feathers  bound  to  it  in  a  certain  way, 
varying  according  to  the  object  to  be  prayed  for. 

The  guards  carry  these  prayer-sticks  a  long  distance,  plant 
them  upright  in  some  lonely  and  sheltered  spot  east,  north, 
west,  and  south  of  the  village,  pray  over  them,  and  then  set 
out  on  a  long,  wild  run  across  country.  At  last  they  re- 
turn to  town  across  the  fields  and  gardens  (for  these  Indians 
are  most  industrious  farmers)  "blowing  away  the  witches." 
Each  guard  carries  a  long  feather  in  either  hand,  and  as  he 
runs  homeward  he  is  continually  crossing  these  and  snapping 
one  over  the  other — which  is  supposed  to  toss  up  all  evil 
spirits  so  that  the  winds  will  bear  them  away. 


DOCTORING  THE  YEAR.  249 

The  medicine-making  (or  "dance")  begins  about  eight 
o'clock  that  evening  in  the  room  where  the  f asters  have  kept 
their  Inside  Days.  Before  the  doors  are  opened,  the  medi- 
cine-men remove  their  ordinary  garments — for  medicine- 
making  must  be  done  with  only  the  dark-blue  breech-clout 
—  and  paint  their  faces  with  yeso  (a  dingy  whitewash  made 
from  gypsum)  and  almagre  (a  red  mineral  paint).  The 
Father  of  All  Medicine  is  marked  with  the  yeso  print  of  a 
bare  hand  on  the  outside  of  each  thigh,  and  on  the  chest ; 
and  the  two  medicine-men  who  are  to  be  the  first  perform- 
ers—  always  the  two  who  have  last  been  received  into  the 
order — are  indicated  by  yeso  lightnings  on  their  legs,  as  a 
symbol  that  they  are  the  forerunners. 

When  the  door  is  opened,  the  people  outside  remove  their 
moccasins  and  stand  motionless.  The  medicine-men  sing,  and 
the  Father  of  All  Medicine  goes  out  to  the  public.  Then  he 
chooses  the  principal  man  of  them  all — always  the  cacique 
if  that  functionary  is  present — turns  his  back  to  him,  and 
puts  the  tips  of  the  eagle-feathers  he  carries  back  over  his 
own  shoulders.  The  cacique  takes  these  tips  in  his  hands, 
and  is  thus  led  into  the  room  followed  in  single  file  by  the 
people.  He  is  given  the  "  seat  of  honor "  nearest  the  medi- 
cine-men j  and  the  general  public  seats  itself  at  will  outside 
a  line  which  has  been  drawn  on  the  adobe  floor  about  ten 
feet  in  front  of  the  medicine-men,  sitting  only  on  moccasins 
and  blankets.  The  shamans  are  seated  in  a  semicircle,  fac- 
ing the  public.  The  Father  of  All  Medicine  sits  in  the  cen- 
ter, and  the  rest  are  ranged  on  either  side  of  him  in  the  order 


250   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

of  their  rank,  so  that  the  two  men  at  the  ends  of  the  semi- 
circle are  the  newest  in  the  order.  In  front  of  each  medi- 
cine-man is  the  sacred  "  Mother,"  the  chief  implement  of  all 
medicine-branches — a  flawless  ear  of  white  corn,  with  a  tuft 
of  downy  feathers  at  the  top,  and  turquoise  ornaments.*  And 
in  front  of  the  Father  of  All  Medicine  is  the  cajete  (earthen 
bowl)  of  sacred  water,  in  whose  clear  bosom  he  can  see  all 
that  is  going  on  in  the  world ! 

When  the  public  is  seated,  the  medicine-men  sing  a  sacred 
song  to  make  the  people  center  their  thoughts  on  nothing 
but  the  matter  in  hand.  The  English  of  this  song  would  be 
about  as  follows : 

Now  bring  the  Corn,  Our  Mother, 

And  all  the  common  corn  ; 

In  all  our  thoughts  and  words 

Let  us  do  only  good ; 

In  all  our  acts  and  words 

Let  us  be  all  as  one. 

While  this  song  is  being  sung  over  several  times,  the  two 
youngest  medicine-men  rise  from  their  seats  on  the  floor,  and 
step  to  where  a  bowl  of  sacred  corn-meal  stands  before  the 
Father  of  All  Medicine.  Here  they  stand  and  pray,  at  each 
request  picking  up  a  pinch  of  the  meal  and  blowing  part  of 
it  toward  the  Father  of  All  Medicine  and  part  toward  the 
Mother-Corn.  Then  they  go  down  the  aisle,  which  is  kept 
open,  to  the  door,  crossing  and  snapping  their  eagle-feathers 
to  toss  up  and  blow  away  any  evil  thought  that  may  be  in  the 
crowd.  By  the  time  they  return  to  the  open  space  the  song 
*  The  emblem  of  the  soul. 


DOCTORING  THE  YEAR.  251 

is  ended  and  another  is  begun  •  and  now  the  next  youngest 
pair  of  medicine-men  rise  and  join  the  first,  going  through 
the  same  performance.  This  is  kept  up  till  nearly  all  the 
medicine-men  are  on  their  feet  together.  Then  begins  the 
wonderful  sleight  of  hand,  which  is  the  most  startling  feature 
of  all,  and  the  one  which  maintains  the  superstitious  power 
of  the  shamans  over  their  people.  It  is  described  in  another 
chapter.  This  conjuring,  which  is  the  "Medicine-Dance" 
proper,  continues  through  five  songs.  Then  the  performers 
take  their  seats  for  a  rest,  and  smoke  cigarettes  which  the 
Cum-pa-huit-la-wen  roll  for  them,  and  presently  rise  to  re- 
sume their  magic. 

When  this  medicine-making  is  done — which  is  only  when 
all  present  are  cured  of  all  their  real  or  imaginary  diseases 
—comes  the  equally  important  Ta-win-Jcoor-shahn-mfy-ee-,  the 
sacred  il  going-out-for-the-year."  The  Father  of  All  Medicine 
rises,  with  the  two  next  in  rank  to  himself,  and  dances  awhile. 
Then  he  puts  on  his  left  hand  and  arm  a  great  glove  of  the 
skin  of  a  bear's  fore-leg,  with  the  claws  on ;  and  upon  each 
foot  a  similar  boot  from  the  bear's  hind-leg.  In  the  glove  he 
sticks  his  eagle-feathers ;  but  his  two  assistants,  who  do  not 
have  the  bear-trappings,  carry  their  feathers  in  their  hands. 
While  these  three  shamans  stand  in  a  row  before  the  assem- 
blage, the  others  sing  for  them  a  special  song : 

Ai-ay,  ai-ay,  hyah  ay-ah 
Ay-ali,  ay-ah,  ay-ah ! 

After  the  Sun-Father 

We  will  follow,  follow,  follow  I 


252   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

When  this  song  is  sung  a  second  time,  the  Father  of  All 
Medicine  goes  behind  his  two  assistants  and  looks  in  the 
sacred  cajete,  to  find  if  it  be  time  to  go  out.  Seeing  that  it 
is,  he  starts  on  a  half -run  to  the  door,  followed  by  the  two 
others.  There  are  always  two  Cum-pa-huit-la-wen  at  the  door, 
and  one  of  these  accompanies  the  three  shamans.  They 
go  to  a  certain  point  on  the  bank  of  the  Eio  Grande,  and 
there  receive  the  omens  which  they  declare  the  river  brings 
down  to  them  from  its  source  in  the  home  of  the  Trues 
of  the  North.  Among  these  tokens  are  always  bunches 
of  green  blades  of  corn  and  wheat — many  weeks  before  a 
spear  of  either  cereal  is  growing  out-of-doors  within  hun- 
dreds of  miles  of  here.  Last  year  "  the  river  brought  them  " 
also  a  live  rabbit — which  is  much  more  easily  accounted  for 
— as  a  sign  that  it  would  be  a  good  year  for  game. 

Returning  with  these  articles,  they  enter  the  medicine- 
house,  and  show  them  to  the  whole  assemblage.  If  the  leaves 
are  green  and  lusty,  it  will  be  a  good  year  for  crops  j  but  if 
they  are  yellow,  there  will  be  a  drought.  Then  the  three 
"  Goers-Out "  lay  the  articles  before  their  medicine-seats  and 
sit  down  for  a  rest. 

Then  the  medicine-making  song  is  resumed,  and  the  con- 
juring begins  again,  and  is  kept  up  almost  all  night. 

After  a  possible  witch-chase  (described  in  another  chapter) 
comes  the  sacred  water-giving.  The  two  youngest  shamans 
take  the  cajetes  and  carry  them  before  the  crowd.  To  each 
person  they  give  a  mouthful,  praying  the  Trues  to  give  him 
a  clean  heart,  strength,  and  health.  The  recipient  does  not 


DOCTORING  THE  YEAR.  253 

swallow  all  the  water,  but  blows  a  little  on  his  hands  and 
rubs  it  upon  his  body,  believing  that  it  will  give  him  strength. 

After  all  have  had  the  sacred  water,  the  next  ceremony  is 
the  Kd-kee-roon,  the  "  Mother-Shaking."  The  Father  of  All 
Medicine  takes  up  all  the  (corn)  "  Mothers,"  two  at  a  time, 
and  shakes  them  over  the  heads  of  the  seated  audience,  rain- 
ing a  shower  of  seeds.  The  people  eagerly  scramble  for  these 
seeds,  for  it  is  firmly  believed  that  he  who  puts  even  one  of 
them  with  his  spring  planting  will  secure  a  very  large  crop. 

All  the  audience  who  desire  now  go  in  front  of  the  semi- 
circle of  seated  medicine-men  and  pray,  scattering  the  sacred 
corn-meal  on  the  row  of  "  Mothers."  Then  all  sing  a  long 
song,  of  which  the  verse  has  the  following  meaning : 

Now !    Now ! 

Our  Mother,  Corn  Mother ! 
Her  Sun  is  coming  up ! 
Our  Mother,  Corn  Mother ! 
Her  Sun  is  arriving ! 
Our  Mother,  Corn  Mother ! 
Her  Sun  is  entering  I 
She  is  the  one  who 
Gives  us  the  road. 
She  is  the  one  who 
Makes  the  road. 
She  is  the  one  who 
Points  the  road  to  us ! 

This  song  is  a  sort  of  benediction,  and  is  sung  standing. 
It  is  begun  when  the  morning  sun  is  really  coming  up  be- 
hind the  mountains,  and  the  Father  of  All  Medicine  can  no 
longer  delay  to  "give  them  the  road" — that  is,  dismiss  the 
22 


254   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

meeting.  He  rises  and  prays  to  the  Trues  to  bless  all  present 
and  those  who  were  unable  to  attend,  and  to  crown  the  year 
with  success  to  all.  Then  he  says :  "A  road  is  given  you," 
and  the  people  all  file  out,  and  when  once  outside  put  on 
their  moccasins  and  hurry  home. 

After  they  are  gone,  all  the  women  bring  to  the  door  offer- 
ings of  food,  which  are  set  before  the  medicine-men  by  the 
Common  Mother,  and  they  eat  heartily  after  their  long  and 
trying  fast.  What  is  left  is  divided  among  them  to  be  taken 
home.  Having  eaten  and  smoked,  the  medicine-men  wash 
off  the  ceremonial  paint,  resume  their  ordinary  clothing, 
close  the  medicine-house,  and  return  to  their  homes.  That 
is  the  end  of  the  Tu-shee-ivim,  and  the  year  is  now  supposed 
to  be  safely  started  toward  a  successful  issue — which  will 
largely  depend,  however,  upon  later  and  special  medicine- 
makings  for  special  occasions  and  emergencies. 


AN  ODD  PEOPLE  AT  HOME. 

this  view  of  the  Strange  Corners  we  ought  cer- 
tainly to  include  a  glimpse  at  the  home-life  of 
the  Pueblos.  A  social  organization  which  looks 
upon  children  as  belonging  to  the  mother  and 
not  to  the  father ;  which  makes  it  absolutely 
Imperative  that  husband  and  wife  shall  be  of  different  divi- 
sions of  society ;  which  makes  it  impossible  for  a  man  to 
own  a  house,  and  gives  every  woman  entire  control  of  her 
home — with  many  other  equally  remarkable  points  of  eti- 
quette— is  surely  different  from  what  most  of  us  are  used 
to.  But  in  the  neglected  corners  of  our  own  country  there 
are  ten  thousand  citizens  of  the  United  States  to  whom  these 
curious  arrangements  are  endeared  by  the  customs  of  im- 
memorial centuries. 

The  basis  of  society  in  the  twenty-six  quaint  town-republics 
of  the  Pueblos — communities  which  are  by  far  the  most 
peaceful  and  the  best-governed  in  North  America — is  not  the 
family,  as  with  us,  but  the  clan.  These  clans  are  clusters  of 
families — arbitrary  social  divisions,  of  which  there  are  from 


256   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

six  to  sixteen  in  each  Pueblo  town.  In  Isleta  there  are  six- 
teen clans — the  Sun  People,  the  Earth  People,  the  Water- 
Pebble  People,  the  Eagle  People,  the  Mole  People,  the  Ante- 
lope People,  the  Deer  People,  the  Mountain-Lion  People,  the 
Turquoise  People,  the  Parrot  People,  the  White  Corn  People, 
the  Red  Corn  People,  the  Blue  Corn  People,  the  Yellow  Corn 
People,  the  Goose  People,  and  the  Wolf  People.  Every  In- 
dian of  the  eleven  hundred  and  fifty  in  the  pueblo  belongs 
to  one  of  these  clans.  A  man  of  the  Eagle  People  cannot 
marry  a  woman  of  that  clan,  nor  vice  versa.  Husband  and 
wife  must  be  of  different  clans.  Still  odder  is  the  law  of  de- 
scent. With  us — and  all  civilized  nations — descent  is  from 
the  father  j  but  with  the  Pueblos,  and  nearly  all  aboriginal 
peoples,  it  is  from  the  mother.  For  instance,  a  man  of  the 
Wolf  Clan  marries  a  woman  of  the  Mole  Clan.  Their  chil- 
dren belong  not  to  the  Wolf  People  but  to  the  Mole  People, 
by  birth.  But  if  the  parents  do  not  personally  like  the  head 
man  of  that  clan,  they  can  have  some  friend  adopt  the  chil- 
dren into  the  Sun  or  Earth  or  any  other  clan. 

There  are  no  Indian  family  names ;  but  all  the  people  here 
have  taken  Spanish  ones — and  the  children  take  the  name  of 
their  mother  and  not  of  their  father.  Thus,  my  landlady  is 
the  wife  of  Antonio  Jojola.  Her  own  name  is  Maria  Gracia 
Chihuihui ;  and  their  roly-poly  son — who  is  commonly  known 
as  Juan  Gordo,  "  Fat  John,"  or,  as  often,  since  I  once  photo- 
graphed him  crawling  out  of  an  adobe  oven,  as  Juan  Biscocho, 
"John  Biscuit" — is  Juan  Chihuihui.  If  he  grows  up  to 
marry  and  have  children,  they  will  not  be  Chihuihuis  nor  Jo- 


AN  ODD  PEOPLE  AT  HOME.  257 

jolas,  but  will  bear  the  Spanish  last  name  of  his  wife.  This 
pueblo,  however,  is  changing  from  the  old  customs  more  than 
are  any  of  the  other  towns ;  and  in  some  families  the  chil- 
dren are  divided,  the  sons  bearing  the  father's  name,  and  the 
daughters  the  mother's.  In  their  own  language,  each  Indian 
has  a  single  name,  which  belongs  to  him  or  her  alone,  and  is 
never  changed. 

The  Pueblos  almost  without  exception  now  have  their 
children  baptized  in  a  Christian  church  and  given  a  Spanish 
name.  But  those  who  are  "  True  Believers  n  in  "  the  Ways  of 
the  Old  "  have  also  an  Indian  christening.  Even  as  I  write, 
scores  of  dusky,  dimpled  babes  in  this  pueblo  are  being  given 
strange  Tigua  names  by  stalwart  godfathers,  who  hold  them 
up  before  the  line  of  dancers  who  celebrate  the  spring  open- 
ing of  the  great  main  irrigating-ditch.  Here  the  christening 
is  performed  by  a  friend  of  the  family,  who  takes  the  babe  to 
the  dance,  selects  a  name,  and  seals  it  by  putting  his  lips  to 
the  child's  lips.*  In  some  pueblos  this  office  is  performed  by 
the  nearest  woman-friend  of  the  mother.  She  takes  the  child 
from  the  house  at  dawn  on  the  third  day  after  its  birth,  and 
names  it  after  the  first  object  that  meets  her  eye  after  the 
sun  comes  up.  Sometimes  it  is  Bluish-Light-of-Dawn,  some- 
times Arrow-(ray)of-the-Sun,  sometimes  Tall-Broken-Pine — 

*  My  own  little  girl,  born  in  the  pueblo  of  Isleta,  was  formally 
christened  by  an  Indian  friend,  one  day,  and  has  ever  since  been  known 
to  the  Indians  as  T'hur-be-say,  "the  Rainbow  of  the  Sun."  For  a 
month  after  her  birth  they  came  daily  to  see  her,  bringing  little  gifts 
of  silver,  calico,  chocolate,  eggs,  Indian  pottery,  and  the  like,  as  is  one 
of  their  customs. 


258   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

and  so  on.  It  is  this  custom  which  gives  rise  to  many  of  the 
Indian  names  which  seem  so  odd  to  us. 

When  a  child  is  born  in  a  Pueblo  town,  a  curious  duty 
devolves  upon  the  father.  For  the  next  eight  days  he  must 
keep  a  fire  going — no  matter  what  the  weather — in  the 
quaint  little  fogon  or  adobe  fireplace,  and  see  that  it  never 
goes  out  by  day  or  night.  This  sacred  birth-fire  can  be  kin- 
dled only  in  the  religious  ways — by  the  fire-drill,  flint  and 
steel,  or  by  a  brand  from  the  hearth  of  the  cacique.  If  pater- 
familias is  so  unlucky  as  to  let  the  birth-fire  go  out,  there  is 
but  one  thing  for  him  to  do.  Wrapping  his  blanket  around 
him,  he  stalks  solemnly  to  the  house  of  the  cacique,  enters, 
and  seats  himself  on  the  floor  by  the  hearth — for  the  cacique 
must  always  have  a  fire.  He  dare  not  ask  for  what  he  wants ; 
but  making  a  cigarette,  he  lights  it  at  the  coals  and  improves 
the  opportunity  to  smuggle  a  living  coal  under  his  blanket 
— generally  in  no  better  receptacle  than  his  own  tough,  bare 
hand.  In  a  moment  he  rises,  bids  the  cacique  good-by,  and 
hurries  home,  carefully  nursing  the  sacred  spark,  and  with  it 
he  rekindles  the  birth-fire.  It  is  solemnly  believed  that  if  this 
fire  were  relighted  in  any  other  manner,  the  child  would  not 
live  out  the  year. 

The  Pueblo  men — contrary  to  the  popular  idea  about  all 
Indians — take  a  very  generous  share  in  caring  for  their 
children.  When  they  are  not  occupied  with  the  duties  of 
busy  farmers,  then  fathers,  grandfathers,  and  great-grand- 
fathers are  generally  to  be  seen  each  with  a  fat  infant  slung 
in  the  blanket  on  his  back,  its  big  eyes  and  plump  face  peep- 


AX  ODD  PEOPLE  AT  HOME.  259 

ing  over  his  shoulder.  The  white-haired  Governor,  the  stern- 
faced  War-Captain,  the  grave  1'rincipales — none  of  them  are 
too  dignified  to  "  tote  "  the  baby  np  and  down  the  courtyard 
or  to  the  public  square  and  to  solemn  dances;  or  even  to 
dance  a  remarkable  domestic  jig,  if  need  be,  to  calm  a  squall 
from  the  precious  riders  upon  their  backs. 

A  Pueblo  town  is  the  children's  paradise.  The  parents 
are  fairly  ideal  in  their  relations  to  their  children.  They  are 
uniformly  gentle,  yet  never  foolishly  indulgent.  A  Pueblo 
child  is  almost  never  punished,  and  almost  never  needs  to 
be.  Obedience  and  respect  to  age  are  born  in  these  brown 
young  Americans,  and  are  never  forgotten  by  them.  I  never 
saw  a  u spoiled  child"  in  all  my  long  acquaintance  with 
the  Pueblos. 

The  Pueblo  woman  is  absolute  owner  of  the  house  and  all 
that  is  in  it,  just  as  her  husband,  owns  the  fields  which  he 
tills.  He  is  a  good  farmer  and  she  a  good  housewife.  Fields 
and  rooms  are  generally  models  of  neatness. 

The  Pueblos  marry  under  the  laws  of  the  church  j  but  many 
of  them  add  a  strange  ceremony  of  their  own — which  was 
their  custom  when  Columbus  discovered  America.  The  be- 
trothed couple  are  given  two  ears  of  raw  corn ;  to  the  youth 
a  blue  ear,  but  to  the  maiden  a  white  one,  because  her  heart 
is  supposed  to  be  whiter.  They  must  prove  their  devotion 
by  eating  the  very  last  hard  kernel.  Then  they  run  a  sacred 
foot-race  in  presence  of  the  old  councilors.  If  the  girl  comes 
in  ahead,  she  "  wins  a  husband  n  and  has  a  little  ascendancy 
over  him ;  if  he  comes  in  first,  to  the  goal,  he  "  wins  a  wife." 


260   SOME  STRANGE  COENERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

If  the  two  come  in  together,  it  is  a  bad  omen,  and  the  match 
is  declared  off. 

Pueblo  etiquette  as  to  the  acquaintance  of  young  people  is 
extremely  strict.  No  youth  and  maiden  must  walk  or  talk 
together  •  and  as  for  a  visit  or  a  private  conversation,  both 
the  offenders — no  matter  how  mature — would  be  soundly 
whipped  by  their  parents.  Acquaintance  between  young  peo- 
ple before  marriage  is  limited  to  a  casual  sight  of  each  other, 
a  shy  greeting  as  they  pass,  or  a  word  when  they  meet  in 
the  presence  of  their  elders.  Matches  are  not  made  by  the 
parents,  as  was  the  case  with  their  Mexican  neighbors  until 
very  recently — and  as  it  still  is  in  many  European  countries 
— but  marriages  are  never  against  the  parental  consent. 
When  a  boy  wishes  to  marry  a  certain  girl,  the  parents  con- 
duct all  the  formal  "  asking  for  "  her  and  other  preliminaries. 

The  very  curious  division  of  the  sexes  which  the  Spanish 
found  among  the  Pueblos  three  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago 
has  now  almost  entirely  disappeared — as  have  also  the  com- 
munity-houses which  resulted  from  the  system.  In  old  times 
only  the  women,  girls,  and  young  children  lived  in  the  dwell- 
ings. The  men  and  boys  slept  always  in  the  estuf a.  Thither 
their  wives  and  mothers  brought  their  meals,  themselves 
eating  with  the  children  at  home.  So  there  was  no  family 
home-life,  and  never  was  until  the  brave  Spanish  mission- 
aries gradually  brought  about  a  change  to  the  real  home  that 
the  Indians  so  much  enjoy  to-day. 

When  an  Indian  dies,  there  are  many  curious  ceremonials 
besides  the  attempts  to  throw  the  witches  off  the  track  of 


AN  ODD  PEOPLE  AT  HOME.  261 

his  spirit.  Food  must  be  provided  for  the  soul's  four  days' 
journey ;  and  property  must  also  be  sent  on  to  give  the  de- 
ceased "  a  good  start "  in  the  next  world.  If  the  departed  was 
a  man  and  had  horses  and  cattle,  some  of  them  are  killed  that 
he  may  have  them  in  the  Beyond.  His  gun,  his  knife,  his 
bow  and  arrows,  his  dancing-costume,  his  clothing,  and  other 
personal  property  are  also  "  killed  "  (in  the  Indian  phrase),  by 
burning  or  breaking  them  •  and  by  this  means  he  is  supposed 
to  have  the  use  of  them  again  in  the  other  world — where  he 
will  eat  and  hunt  and  dance  and  farm  just  as  he  has  done 
here.  In  the  vicinity  of  eveiy  Pueblo  town  is  always  a 
"killing-place" — entirely  distinct  and  distant  from  the  con- 
secrated graveyard  where  the  body  is  laid — and  there  the 
ground  is  strewn  with  countless  broken  weapons  and  orna- 
ments, earthen  jars,  stone  hand-mills,  and  other  utensils — 
for  when  a  woman  dies,  her  household  furniture  is  "  sent  on  " 
after  her  in  the  same  fashion.  The  precious  beads  of  coral, 
turquoise,  and  silver,  and  the  other  silver  jewelry,  of  which 
these  people  have  great  quantities,  is  generally  laid  away  with 
the  body  in  the  bare,  brown  graveyard  in  front  of  the  great 
adobe  church. 


XXII. 

A  SAINT  IN  COURT. 

[HILE  law  in  the  abstract  may  deserve  its  repu- 
tation as  one  of  the  driest  of  subjects,  the 
history  of  its  development,  provisions,  and  ap- 
plications contains  much  that  is  curious  and 
interesting.  There  have  been,  among  different 
nations  and  in  different  ages,  laws  remarkable  for  eccentri- 
city ;  and  as  for  the  astonishing  causes  in  which  the  aid  of 
justice  has  been  invoked,  a  mere  catalogue  of  them  would  be 
of  appalling  length.  Nor  are  these  legal  curiosities  confined 
to  bygone  ages  and  half-civilized  nations.  Our  own  coun- 
try, has  furnished  laws  and  lawsuits  perhaps  as  remarkable 
as  any. 

Among  these  suits,  none  is  more  interesting  than  one  of 
the  few  legal  contests  in  which  the  Pueblo  Indians  have  ever 
figured.  With  these  quiet,  decorous,  kind,  and  simple-hearted 
children  of  the  Sun,  quarrels  of  any  sort  are  extremely  rare, 
and  legal  controversies  still  rarer  j  but  there  was  one  lawsuit 
between  two  of  the  principal  Pueblo  towns  which  excited  great 
interest  among  alTthe  Indians  and  Mexicans  of  the  territory, 
and  the  few  Saxon- Americans  who  were  then  here ;  which 


A  SAINT   IN  COURT.  263 

nearly  made  a  war — a  lawsuit  for  a  saint !  It  was  finally  ad- 
judicated by  the  Supreme  Court  of  New  Mexico  in  January, 
1857.  It  figures  in  the  printed  reports  of  that  high  tribunal, 
under  the  title,  "The  Pueblo  of  Laguna  vs.  The  Pueblo  of 
Acoma" — being  an  appeal  in  the  case  of  Acoma  vs.  Laguna. 
Of  all  the  nineteen  pueblos  of  New  Mexico,  Acoma  is  by 
far  the  most  wonderful.  Indeed,  it  is  probably  the  most  re- 
markable city  in  the  world.  Perched  upon  the  level  summit 
of  a  great  "  box  "  of  rock  whose  perpendicular  sides  are  nearly 
four  hundred  feet  high,  and  reached  by  some  of  the  dizziest 
paths  ever  trodden  by  human  feet,  the  prehistoric  town  looks 
far  across  the  wilderness.  Its  quaint  terraced  houses  of  gray 
adobe,  its  huge  church — hardly  less  wonderful  than  the  pyra- 
mids of  Egypt  as  a  monument  of  patient  toil — its  great 
reservoir  in  the  solid  rock,  its  superb  scenery,  its  romantic 
history,  and  the  strange  customs  of  its  six  hundred  people, 
all  are  rife  with  interest  to  the  few  Americans  who  visit  the 
isolated  city.  Neither  history  nor  tradition  tells  us  when 
Acoma  was  founded.  The  pueblo  was  once  situated  on  top 
of  the  Mesa  Encantada  (Enchanted  Table-land),  which  rises 
seven  hundred  feet  in  air  near  the  mesa  now  occupied.  Four 
hundred  years  ago  or  so,  a  frightful  storm  swept  away  the 
enormous  leaning  rock  which  served  as  a  ladder,  and  the 
patient  people — who  were  away  at  the  time — had  to  build  a 
new  city.  The  present  Acoma  was  an  old  town  when  the  .first 
European — Coronado,  the  famous  Spanish  explorer — saw  it 
in  1540.  With  that  its  authentic  history  begins — a  strange, 
weird  history,  in  scattered  fragments,  for  which  we  must 


264    SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

delve  among  the  curious  "  memorials n  of  the  Spanish  con- 
querors and  the  scant  records  of  the  heroic  priests. 

Laguna  lies  about  twenty  miles  northeast  of  Acoma,  and 
is  now  a  familiar  sight  to  travelers  on  the  A.  &  P.  R.  R., 
which  skirts  the  base  of  the  sloping  rock  on  which  the  town 
is  built.  It  is  a  much  younger  town  than  Acoma,  of  which 
it  is  a  daughter  colony,  but  has  a  half  more  people.  It  was 
founded  in  1699. 

One  of  the  notable  things  about  the  venerable  Catholic 
churches  of  New  Mexico  is  the  number  of  ancient  paintings 
and  statues  of  the  saints  which  they  contain.  Some  are  the 
rude  daubs  on  wood  made  by  devout  Indians,  and  some  are 
the  canvases  of  prominent  artists  of  Mexico  and  Spain.  It 
was  concerning  one  of  the  latter  that  the  curious  lawsuit  be- 
tween Laguna  and  Acoma  arose. 

There  is  considerable  mystery  concerning  this  picture, 
arising  from  the  lack  of  written  history.  The  painting  of 
San  Jose**  (St.  Joseph)  was  probably  the  one  presented  by 
Charles  II.  of  Spain.  Entregas,  in  his  "Visits,"  enumer- 
ates the  pictures  which  he  found  in  the  Laguna  church  in 
1773,  and  mentions  among  them  "  a  canvas  of  a  yard  and  a 
half,  with  the  most  holy  likeness  of  St.  Joseph  with  his  blue 
mark,  the  which  was  presented  by  Our  Lord  the  King." 
The  Acomas,  however,  claim  that  the  king  gave  the  picture 
to  them  originally,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  was  in  their 
possession  over  a  hundred  years  ago. 

When  brave  Fray  Ramirez  founded  his  lonely  mission  in 
*  Pronounced  Sahn  Ho-zdy. 


A  SAINT  IN  COURT.  265 

Acoma  in  1629,  he  dedicated  the  little  adobe  chapel  "  To  God, 
to  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  and  to  St.  Joseph."  San  Jose 
was  the  patron  saint  of  the  pueblo,  and  when  the  fine  Spanish 
painting  of  him  was  hung  on  the  dull  walls  of  a  later  church, 
it  became  an  object  of  peculiar  veneration  to  the  simple  na- 
tives. Their  faith  in  it  was  touching.  Whether  it  was  that 
the  attacks  of  the  merciless  Apache  might  be  averted,  or  that 
a  pestilence  might  be  checked,  or  that  their  crops  might  be 
abundant,  it  was  to  San  Jose  that  they  went  with  prayers 
and  votive  offerings.  And  as  generation  after  generation 
was  born,  lived  its  quaint  life,  and  was  at  last  laid  to  rest  in 
the  wonderful  graveyard,  the  veneration  of  the  painting  grew 
stronger  and  more  clear,  while  oil  and  canvas  were  growing 
dim  and  moldy. 

Many  years  ago — we  do  not  know  the  date — the  people  of 
Laguna  found  themselves  in  a  very  bad  way.  Several  suc- 
cessive crops  had  failed  them,  winter  storms  had  wrought 
havoc  to  house  and  farm,  and  a  terrible  epidemic  had  carried 
off  scores  of  children.  And  all  this  time  Acoma  was  pros- 
pering wonderfully.  Acoma  believed  it  was  because  of  San 
Jose ;  and  Laguna  began  to  believe  so  too.  At  last  the  gov- 
ernor and  principal  men  of  Laguna,  after  solemn  council, 
mounted  their  silver-trapped  ponies,  wrapped  their  costliest 
blankets  about  them,  and  rode  over  valley  and  mesa  to  "  the 
City  in  the  Sky."  A  runner  had  announced  their  coming, 
and  they  were  formally  received  by  the  principales  of  Acoma, 
and  escorted  to  the  dark  estufa.  After  a  propitiatory  smoke 
the  Laguna  spokesman  began  the  speech.  They  all  knew 
23 


266   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

how  his  pueblo  had  suffered,  while  Laguna  had  no  saint 
on  whom  they  could  rely.  It  was  now  the  first  of  March. 
Holy  Week  was  almost  here,  and  Laguna  desired  to  celebrate 
it  with  unusual  ceremonies,  hoping  thereby  to  secure  divine 
favor.  Would  Acoma  kindly  lend  San  Jose  to  her  sister 
pueblo  for  a  season,  that  he  might  bring  his  blessing  to  the 
afflicted  town  ? 

A  white-headed  Acoma  replied  for  his  people.  They  knew 
how  angry  Tata  Dios  had  been  with  Laguna,  and  wished  to 
help  appease  him  if  possible.  Acoma  needed  San  Jose's  pres- 
ence in  Holy  Week  •  but  she  was  prosperous  and  would  do 
without  him.  She  would  lend  him  to  Laguna  for  a  month, 
but  then  he  must  be  returned  without  fail. 

So  next  day,  when  the  Laguna  delegation  started  home- 
ward, two  strong  men  carried  the  precious  canvas  carefully 
between  them,  and  that  night  it  hung  upon  the  rudely  deco- 
rated walls  of  the  Laguna  church,  while  hundreds  of  solemn 
Indians  knelt  before  it.  And  in  the  procession  of  Holy  Week 
it  was  borne  in  a  little  shrine  about  the  town  while  its  escort 
fired  their  rusty  flint-locks  in  reiterant  salute. 

Old  men  tell  me  that  there  was  a  change  in  the  fortunes  of 
Laguna  from  that  day  forth.  At  all  events,  when  the  month 
was  up  the  Lagunas  did  not  return  the  borrowed  painting, 
and  the  Acoma  messengers  who  came  next  day  to  demand  it 
were  informed  that  it  would  stay  where  it  was  unless  Acoma 
could  take  it  by  force  of  arms.  The  Acomas  then  appealed 
to  their  priest,  Fray  Mariano  de  Jesus  Lopez,  the  last  of  the 
Franciscans  here.  He  cited  the  principals  of  both  pueblos 


A  SAINT  IN  COUET.  267 

to  appear  before  him  in  Acoma  on  a  certain  day,  bringing 
the  saint. 

When  they  were  all  assembled  there,  the  priest  ordered  a 
season  of  prayer  that  God  and  San  Jose  would  see  justice 
done  in  the  matter  at  issue,  and  after  this  held  mass.  He 
then  suggested  that  they  draw  lots  for  the  saint,  to  which 
both  pueblos  cordially  agreed,  believing  that  God  would  di- 
rect the  result.  It  was  a  solemn  and  impressive  sight  when 
all  were  gathered  in  the  great,  gloomy  church.  Near  the 
altar  was  a  tinaja  (earthen  jar)  covered  with  a  white  cloth. 
At  each  side  stood  a  wee  Acoma  girl  dressed  in  spotless  white, 
from  the  pano  over  her  shoulders  to  the  queer,  boot-like  buck- 
skin leggings.  Beside  one  of  them  was  the  old  priest,  who 
acted  for  Acoma  j  and  beside  the  other  were  Luis  Saraceno 
and  Margarita  Hernandez,  on  behalf  of  Laguna.  Twelve 
ballots  were  put  in  the  tinaja  and  well  shaken ;  eleven  were 
blank,  the  twelfth  had  a  picture  of  the  saint  rudely  drawn 
upon  it. 

"Draw,"  said  Fray  Mariano,  when  all  was  ready;  and 
Maria  thrust  her  little  arm  into  the  jar  and  drew  out  a  ballot, 
which  she  handed  to  the  priest.  "Acoma,  blank!  Draw, 
Lolita,  for  Laguna."  Lolita  dived  down  and  drew  a  blank 
also.  Maria  drew  the  third  ballot,  and  Lolita  the  fourth — 
both  blanks.  And  then  a  devout  murmur  ran  through  the 
gathered  Acomas  as  Maria  drew  forth  the  fifth  paper,  which 
bore  the  little  picture  of  San  Jose. 

"God  has  decided  in  favor  of  Acoma,"  said  the  priest, 
"and  San  Jose  stays  in  his  old  home."  The  crowd  poured 


268       SOME   STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

out  of  the  church,  the  Acomas  hugging  each  other  and 
thanking  God,  the  Lagunas  walking  surlily  away. 

Such  a  feast  had  never  been  in  Acoma  as  the  grateful  people 
began  to  prepare ;  but  their  rejoicing  was  short-lived.  That 
very  evening  a  strong  armed  force  of  Lagunas  came  quietly 
up  the  great  stone  "  ladder  "  to  the  lofty  town,  and  appeared 
suddenly  in  front  of  the  church.  "  Open  the  door/'  they  said 
to  the  frightened  sacristan,  "  or  we  will  break  it  down.  We 
have  come  for  the  saint."  The  news  ran  through  the  little 
town  like  wild-fire.  All  Acoma  was  wild  with  grief  and  rage ; 
and  hopeless  as  a  war  with  Laguna  would  have  been;  it  would 
have  commenced  then  and  there  but  for  the  counsel  of  the 
priest.  He  exhorted  his  flock  to  avoid  bloodshed  and  give 
the  saint  up  to  the  Lagunas,  leaving  a  final  decision  of  the 
dispute  to  the  courts.  His  advice  prevailed ;  and  after  a  few 
hours  of  excitement  the  Lagunas  departed  with  their  precious 
booty. 

As  soon  thereafter  as  the  machinery  of  the  law  could  be  set 
in  motion,  the  Pueblos  of  Acoma  filed  in  the  District  Court 
of  the  Second  Judicial  District  of  New  Mexico  a  bill  of 
Chancery  vs.  the  Pueblo  of  Laguna,  setting  forth  the  above 
facts  in  detail. 

They  also  asked  that  a  receiver  be  appointed  to  take  charge 
of  San  Jose  till  the  matter  should  be  decided.  The  Lagunas 
promptly  filed  an  answer  setting  forth  that  they  knew  noth- 
ing of  Acoma's  claim  that  the  picture  was  originally  given  to 
Acoma ;  that  by  their  own  traditions  it  was  clearly  the  prop- 
erty of  Laguna,  and  that  Acoma  stole  it ;  that  they  went 


A  SAINT  IN  COUET.  269 

peaceably  to  reclaim  it,  and  Acoma  refused  to  give  it  up ; 
that  Acoma  proposed  to  draw  lots  for  it,  but  they  refused  and 
took  it  home. 

Judge  Kirby  Benedict,  sitting  as  chancellor,  heard  this 
extraordinary  case,  and  the  evidence  being  overwhelmingly 
in  favor  of  Acoma,  decided  accordingly.  The  Lagunas  ap- 
pealed to  the  Supreme  Court,  which  after  most  careful  inves- 
tigation affirmed  the  decision  of  the  chancellor.  In  rendering 
his  decision  the  judge  said : 

"Having  disposed  of  all  the  points,  .  .  .  the  court  deems  it 
not  improper  to  indulge  in  some  reflections  on  this  interest- 
ing case.  The  history  of  this  painting,  its  obscure  origin,  its 
age,  and  the  fierce  contest  which  these  two  Indian  pueblos 
have  carried  on,  bespeak  the  inappreciable  value  which  is 
placed  upon  it.  The  intrinsic  value  of  the  oil,  paint,  and  cloth 
by  which  San  Jose  is  represented  to  the  senses,  it  has  been 
admitted  in  argument,  probably  would  not  exceed  twenty- 
five  cents  j  but  this  seemingly  worthless  painting  has  well- 
nigh  cost  these  two  pueblos  a  bloody  and  cruel  struggle,  and 
had  it  not  been  for  weakness  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  pueb- 
los, its  history  might  have  been  written  in  blood.  .  .  .  One 
witness  swore  that  unless  San  Jose  is  in  Acoma,  the  people 
cannot  prevail  with  God.  All  these  supposed  virtues  and  at- 
tributes pertaining  to  this  saint,  and  the  belief  that  the  throne 
of  God  can  be  successfully  approached  only  through  him, 
have  contributed  to  make  this  a  case  of  deep  interest,  involv- 
ing a  portraiture  of  the  feelings,  passions,  and  character  of 
these  peculiar  people.  Let  the  decree  below  be  affirmed." 


270   SOME  STRANGE  CORNERS  OF  OUR  COUNTRY. 

This  settled  the  matter,  and  Acoma  sent  a  delegation  to 
take  the  saint  to  his  home.  Half-way  to  Laguna  they  found 
the  painting  resting  against  a  tree  beside  the  road,  the  face 
toward  Acoma.  To  this  day  the  simple  people  believe  that 
San  Jose  knew  he  was  now  free,  and  was  in  such  haste  to  get 
back  to  Acoma  that  he  started  out  by  himself !  The  dim  and 
tattered  canvas  hangs  beside  the  altar  in  the  great  church  at 
Acoma  still,  and  will  so  long  as  a  shred  is  left. 

Fray  Mariano,  who  thus  averted  a  destructive  war,  met  a 
tragic  end  in  1848.  He  went  out  one  morning  to  shoot  a 
chicken  for  dinner.  His  venerable  pistol  would  not  work 
till  he  looked  into  it  to  see  what  was  the  matter.  Then  it 
went  off  and  blew  out  his  brains. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  Strange  Corners  of  our  own  coun- 
try. There  are  very  many  more,  of  which  others  can  tell  you 
much  better  than  I.  This  book  is  meant  to  call  your  atten- 
tion chiefly  to  the  southwest,  which  is  the  most  remarkable 
area  in  the  United  States  and  the  most  neglected — though 
by  no  means  the  only  one  worth  learning  about  and  seeing. 
The  whole  West  is  full  of  wonders,  and  we  need  not  run  to 
other  lands  to  gratify  our  longing  for  the  curious  and  the 
wonderful.  The  trip  abroad  may  at  least  be  postponed  until 
we  are  ready  to  tell  those  we  shall  meet  in  foreign  lands 
something  of  the  wonders  of  our  own. 


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JUL  9     1936 

AIITO 

WM  SEP  Z9  *91 

Rjg  u    [9M 

• 

•  ,      , 

MAR    2i  1939 

^1  AttfTJR2ni 

oi  nug  Jf-Ln 

• 

nil    4-Q  AQQ1 

JUL1"  '33 

AUTO  DISC  AU6  20  'S 

0 

OCT  2  JM991 

LD  21-100m-8,'34 

15507 


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